THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 446, 9 January 1948, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Voice and Two Pianos HE title Short and Sweet aptly describes a BBC programme to be heard from Station 4YZ at 12.15 p.m. this Sunday, January 11. Short it is15 minutes-and sweet certainly with Elizabeth Welch in sentimental songs, and Arthur Young and George Shearing at two pianos. Elizabeth Welch was born in New York, but her mother is Scottish. Until she was 19 she intended to .be a social worker, but decided that the stage had a stronger appeal for her and got into Running Wild on the strength of her voice. She arrived in Europe in 1928 in the "Blackbirds" Company and was a big success, subsequently topping the bill in shows in Paris and London. Within a year she was also a favourite with radio listeners. Armenian Concerto WHEN Aram Khachaturian composed his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in 1937, the occasion was hailed as "an event in Russian music," for up to that time the Soviets’ Association: of Contemporary Music had frowned on music for the piano as "a form of bourgeois drawing-room music-making,’ with the result that very few piano concertos had been composed. This work, like most of Khachaturian’s music, is inspired by the folk-lore of his native Armenia, and in parts it imitates national Armenian instruments. There are three movements, with some vivid orchestral work matching the virtuosity of the solo passages. Although his technique of composition generally follows the precepts of the Russian National School, supplemented by a wider use of dissonance, in this concerto he succeeds in combining a folk-song style with the symphonic principle® of melodic development laid down in Western European classical music. A recording of the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra will be heard in the Classical session from 2YA at 2,0 p.m. on Wednesday, January 14. Alto Rhapsody HAPSODY is a musical term which has always had a pretty free interpre-tation-Liszt really made first use of it with his 15 Hungarian Rhapsodies, which set a new fashion for piano music. Each of these is a kind of ebullient and freeranging fantasia on folk melodies, but Brahms later departed from Liszt’s idea when he composed a Rhapsody for contralto with male choir and orchestra, and again in three ballade-like piano pieces that he also called Rhapsodies. None of these compositions uses folk material, and other composers, notably Dohnanyi and Gershwin, have since followed this example. A recent recording of Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody, as it is usually called, with Marian Anderson, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Municipal Chorus conducted by Pierre Monteux, will be heard from 2YA at 9.35 p.m. on Thursday, January 15. The Phantom Fleet HEN a sailor writes about the sea you can count on the background detail being correct, and that is certainly true of The Phantom Fleet, the BBC’s naval serial-thriller which is being broadcast from 2YD at 9.15 p.m.

on Sundays, for the author is a serving officer of the Royal Navy. It would not be fair to give away the whole plot of this serial, but we can reveal that it is a fast-moving tale of how two British

naval officers and a girl defeated the scheme of a German master-spy to create havoc among Britain’s war-time shipping in the South Atlantic. The part of the hero, Commander Richard Norton, R.N., . is pliaved bv Christo-

pher Quest, a former Second Mate with the New Zealand Shipping Co., while Herbert Lom, the Czech film actor (who will be remembered as the psychiatrist in the film The Seventh Veil), ably fills his villainous role as the sinister Baron Carl von Marnitz. North of the’ Border Witt FYFFE’S death last December marked the close of one of the most picturesque careers on Britain’s music halls, for the grand old comedian, if not as well-known as Sir Harry Lauder, was just as successful on the boards with his own particular brand of Scots humour. His many recordings made him known to a wide: public-especially that gramophile’s gem, his version of "I Belong tae Glasgow"-but he is probably best known to New Zealanders for his performance in the film Rulers of the Sea, which appeared here in 1940. In it he played the part of Old Bob, the cantankerous but lovable old Scottish engineer who built the engine used in the +. steam crossing of the Atlantic. A ogramme of Will Fyffe recordings will be heard in 3YA’s For.My Lady session, Popular Entertainers, at 10.10 a.m, on Wednesday, January 14. Band Music, Look You! HENEVER an event of national importance occurs in Wales-a Rugby football victory, for example-Welsh-men celebrate the occasion with music, and no doubt the strains of "Land of Our Fathers" rang out loud and clear the other week when the Australian Wallabies were defeated by six points to nil. The people of Wales do not, however, confine their musical activities to singing alone, and there is a big following in the country for brass bands. The BBC recorded recently a _ programme by the champion band of South Wales, the Park and Dare Workmen’s Band from the Rhondda Valley, -and this will be heard from 1YA at 7.30 p.m. on Thursday, January 15. FP} ‘ and Organ O listeners who like to get away from the more familiar paths of music we may commend a recital by strings and organ from 2YN on Sunday, January 18, at 7.0 p.m. The programme, which was recorded by the BBC, is made up of a sonata by Handel, and a set of six German peasant dances by Mozart. The players, most of them young, but all of them distinguished in their field, are David Martin and Neville Marriner (violins), James Whitehead (’cello) and Arnold Goldsbrov@h (organ).