RADIO VIEWSREEL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 459, 9 April 1948, Page 8

RADIO VIEWSREEL

(What Our Commentators Say

| What Came After T was a happy inspiration that prompted the writing of a play around the second marriage of Katharine, wife of Henry V. With the charming picture of Katharine in the all-too-short film sequence still fresh in our minds, She Married Again inevitably got off to a flying start. Katharine, as the young widow in love with Owen Ap Meredith Ap Tudor-whom, as her cousin Charles so elegantly phrases it, she is bent on promoting from Clerk of the Wardrobe to Lord of the Bedchamber-is still a delightful figure, especially if you have in ming her film counterpart. But the majority of my bouquets go to Fluellen, for whom, look you, I have to,confess to a very grave weakness. He discourses in such convincingly Shakespearian language that it comes as rather a shock to hear our old friend, now Sergeant Williams, respond to one of Fluellen’s eloquent periods with a hearty "O.K." While admitting that this play was particularly fortunate in its antecedents, the fact remains that all the characters, from Charles of Orleans, eking out a most tolerable existence as prisoner of the English, to Gloster, the villain of the piece, helped to make this the sort of semi-historical play in which one is conscious both of what-happened-before and of what-came-after, ; Still the Blood is Strong \JHETHER due to poor recordings, poor reproduction, or poor reception, the BBC commemoration programme for Otago’s centenary didn’t reach me with any great clarity, and I found myself missing portions of it owing to the very concentration with which it was necessary to listen, in order to distinguish what some of the more intense Scottish brogues were saying. This programme was made in Scotland especially for the 100th anniversary of: the arrival of the Scottish settlers in Otago, and, in interesting contrast to most of the centenary week’s broadcasts,

it stressed the instigation of the emigration scheme in the Old Country, the various types of people who were attracted by it, and the reasons why they chose to leave their country for a land half the world. away. That the programme was heavily laden with religious fervour was therefore not unexpected,

since the very upheaval caused by differences of religious opinion was ,a vital reason why so many of our pioneers were representative of those to whom freedom of religious thought was not only a principle but a necessity. The programme was short, but covered many aspects of the pioneer story and introduced most of the relevant names, places and facts. Compiled and recorded in the land which sent the settlers forth, and heard in the land where they dropped anchor after so many months of weary voyaging, the programme was a fine gesture and represented the affection and goodwill which still link two places as distant from each other as Scotland and Otago. ; Happy Landing HE BBC Commemoration programme Jeft the Scottish settlers safely at anchor in Otago Harbour, but didn’t bother to follow them ashore. This was the privilege of the 4YA microphone, which adequately followed the actors at Port Chalmers who on March 23 reenacted the landing from the John Wickliffe. Possibly, owing to the cold (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) weather and the presence in Port Chalmers of so many thousands of spectators, those who preferred their firesides and radios may have heard more of what went on, and heard in greater comfort, than those who made the journey to Port; but the description of crinolines being assisted ashore by Maori grass mats was one which I would gladly have preferred via television. Of the actors in the pageant, only one or two sounded amateurish and a trifle stilted, the main figures out of the past being represented in fine style. It was a pleasure to hear the Maori place-names pronounced correctly by the Pakeha Kettle, It made me wonder why we don’t take the trouble to revert to the proper pronunciation of Waikouaiti, Taiaro, and Otakou, instead of preferring the atrocious Wacker-wyte, Tie-rower, and Oh-ter-cow. I was surprised, on the other hantl, to hear the Maori party (after a warlike haka which must have set many of the crinolined visitors off in the vapours), singing ‘a very sweet song of welcome in three-four time; I doubt if this was original Maori music as rendered before the settlers’ arrival. But possibly, even a hundred years ago, the Maori’s singing had absorbed such music from the lips of the settlers who were already established here before the Scottish immigrants arrived. Island Premiere NEW note in the 4YA series of _ Desert Island Discs was struck by Roy Spackman, who, after explaining

» oe the general nature of the musical cargo he would have displayed had time permitted, confined himself in his brief half-hour session to one old recording by Menuhin, and one completely new and quite astounding series of recordings --new to me and I think new to local listeners in general. This was Benjamin Britten’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell. As Mr. Spackman pointed out in introducing this work, it certainly showed the composer’s un-

canny ability for displaying the tone-colours of the different orchestral -instruments at their most varied. The Purcell theme scarcely seems adequate inspiration | for this pyrotechnic four de force.

in which instruments are combined and contrasted in a series of versatile variations which are so’ stamped with the composer’s own musical and stylistic imprint that no listener could possibly attribute the work to anyone but Britten. The concluding fugue is a short and lively masterpiece in which, it seems, the theme does duty for every instrument from piccolo to double-bass. Our thanks are due to Mr. Spackman for introducing this work and for his invaluable assistance in the naming of the instruments in each variation, I hope it won’t be too long before listeners can renew their introductory acquaintance with the work,