THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 459, 9 April 1948, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Japan's Livestock Population TO the New Zealander Japanese farming may seem as "quaint" as some other aspects of Japanese life. The livestock population of Japan consists of one and three-quarter million cattle, a million and a-quarter horses, half a million pigs, »a quarter million goats, 200,000 sheep and 17 million head of poultry. There are seldom more than eight sheep, or three or four cows, one pig or ten fowls on an average-sized farm. Some of the reasons why this is so will be given in a talk from 1YA at 7.15 p.m. on Monday, April 12, by A. V. Allo, Instructor in Agriculture, Tauranga, who was recently in Japan. He will refer to the serious attempt since the end of World War II made by the Japanese Government to increase the livestock populatidn, and will refer to some of the difficulties that Government faces and in what lines the prospects for success appear best. They Died Young "\VHOM the gods love die young," said the Greek poet Menander, and Plautus, Byron, and many another have echoed his words. The five men whose stories are told in the BBC series Whom the Gods Love all died Young, but each in his way achieved greatness during the short span of his life. James Wolfe fell. at the taking of Quebec (1759) when he was Commander in Chief of a British army at the age of 32; Henry Stuart, Prince of Wales, died (in 1612) of typhoid when he was 18; the painter R. P. Bonington lived for only 26 years; and H. G. J. Moseley, a brilliant young scientist associated with Rutherford in early atomic research, was killed at Gallipoli aged 28. Perhaps the best known of those included is the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley who perished at sea off the Italian coast in his thirtieth year, but the passing of each of them left an irreplateable gap in some part of the national life of his. time. Whom the Gods Love will start from 4YA at 8.30 p.m. on Monday, April 12. British Chamber Music -IX programmes of chamber music by British composers, specially recorded by the BBC, will give listeners in New Zealand the chance of hearing. leading London concert artists under ideal conditions. The first concert, which will be heard from 2YC at 8.0 p.m. on Monday, April 12, is devoted to Arnold Bax. It contains his Fantasy Sonata for Harp and Viola, and his settings of two songs, "Youth," and "Green Grow the Rushes." The second programme includes piano works by Delius, Cyril Scott, and E. J. ‘Moeran, as well as Michael Tippett’s Quartet No. 1 and Herbert Miurrill’s Impromptu No. 2. Works played in some of the other programmes are String Trio by Lennox Berkeley, Prelude and Fugue by Gerald Finzi, String Quartet No. 1 by Benjamin Britten, and Sonata for ’Cello and Piano by John Ireland. The recordings have all been made by famous British chamber music ensembles. Bending the Beam FTER the fall of France in 1940 the Germans established coastal radio stations to guide their bombers over

English cities. Beams would be directed from two stations and a raider would fly along one beam until it came to the

point of intersection with the other, and then release its bombs. Luckily the British succeeded in locating these sta‘tions, replotting the beams, and bending them in a slightly different direction so that the ‘bombs

were often dropped in open fields. A man whose team worked out the location of one of these stations from computed bearings was Dr. L. J. Comrie, the New Zealand mathematician who was interviewed recently by The Listener. In a talk Mathematics in War ‘to be broadcast from 2YA at 7.15 p.m. on Friday, April 16, Dr. Comrie wiil speak about some of the wartime achievements of his Scientific Computing Service. Besides making possible the beam-bending that saved countless lives, they computed, in a remarkably short time, tables for directing anti-aircraft fire, and others for use by the American Air Force with their famous Norden bomb sight. Spirits in a Pub O much travail and effort is expended by novelists and script-writers in finding catchy titles for their products that it is balm to come across a radio tale with a straightforward name. H.~ Oldfield Box is the author of a thriller with the simple title The Haunted Inn, intriguing enough in itself to persuade listeners to 3YA to stay up a little later than usual on Monday, April 12. At the. suitable hour of 10.10 p.m: the BBC Repertory Company’s version of The Haunted Inn will be broadcast. This is the story of what happened to a matter-of-fact innkeeper and his highly-strung wife, and is a yarn with a decidedly unusual ending. Charles Leno, one of the’ stalwarts of the Repertory Company, plays the innkeeper, and the play was recorded by the BBC Transcription Service from the origin&l broadcast in the Light Programme. .Leno is a Londoner who worked as a clerk before trying his luck in the theatre. He joined the Old Vic Company and toured with them in Britain and overseas. Now he has a fulltime job at the BBC’s microphones. Poetry and Integrity OHN IRELAND’S These Things Shall Be (1937), a setting for chorus and orchestra of a poem by John Addington Symonds, was his first major choral work, and a new recording of it by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Luton Choral Society of Bedfordshire (soloist, Renée Soames), will be heard from 3YA at 8.0 p.m. on Friday, April 16. Ireland is most popular for his songs, especially his Marigold cycle and the settings of Hardy and Arthur Symonds, which are among the treasures of English vocal music. The more limited appeal of his larger works seems to be due in the main to their aura of austerity and what might be called emotional

repression. Musicians, however, respect them for their qualities of personal integrity and often tender or poignant poetry, and this is the case with: These Things Shall Be. It is based on Symonds’s utopian poem A Vista, and the actual quotation "from which the title was taken is: These things-they are no dream-shall be For happier ‘men when we are gone. World Theatre ‘TOWARDS the end of last year the NZBS presented the BBC’s series of recorded plays called World Theatre. Readers may remember that The Listener, after the broadcast of. The Trojan Women, sought the reaction of a representative selection of people who might have been expected to listen to it. Those who had

tuned in found the experience interesting and in many cases moving. Having been round the YA stations, World Theatre will shortly be introduced at other National stations. Listeners to 2YH at 2.0 p.m. on Sunday, April 18, will hear Rostand’s

L’Aiglon, the story of the tragic young Duke of Reichstadt, who was the son of Napoleon by his second wife. Clemence Dane’s translation brings out all the pathos of the young prince, virtually a prisoner at the Austrian court and yearning to return to France to take his place as his father’s son. On the same date, at 3.0 p.m., Station 3ZR will present Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. Station 4YZ will open its series on Sun--day, May 30. The five plays in the series will be heard at monthly intervais.