RADIO VIEWSREEL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 464, 14 May 1948, Page 8

RADIO VIEWSREEL

What Our Commentators Say

Light and Live FROM Station 4YA have come recently a number of new studio presentations of the "light" or popular type, some of which are much better than others. Popular jazz, "novelty" numbers, and the ballad type of song cannot be said to be my cup of tea in the very least, and I am not therefore an unbiased judge of programmes containing this kind of item. But, as a speaker in the recent discussion on Culture v. Popularity pointed out, whether a programme is cultural or popular or both at once, it must be good of its kind. If, as well as being technically competent, it manages to present the listener with something new, or present old material in a new and interesting way, it has earned its place on the programmes: and will stand a good chance of impressing listeners. Not all

the new programmes have been impressive, but two of the best were Roi Don’s piano programme of rather sentimentalstyle popular jazz, and the session called Songs For Sale. The singers in the latter were both possessed of pleasant

voices which blended well, and Ron Clarkson’s piano accompaniments were good enough for me to want to hear him doing solo work. On the same night as these two programmes, 4YA gave us yet another which I hadn’t heard before, entitled It’s a Date. This was not a studio presentation, but a combination of various popular types of entertainment, including an old record about Will Hay and the bootmaker, 4 new record about the ancient sport of racing which was decidedly "different," a brief detective problem, and an elementary musical quiz. It is encouraging, however, to note that more of our own artists are being used in new programmes of the popular type, and if the best of our own singers and players replace the less attractive of the overseas recordings, the attempt to provide listeners with more. "live" programmes will at the same time raise the whole standard of this kind of entertainment. Sting in the Tail HE short story Prelude to Murder is one of J. Jefferson Farjeon’s more effective, and especially is it effective for radio, as was’ shown by the presentation of it in the NZBS series Radio Playhouse, from 4YA. (The inclusion of a short story under this heading was rather confusing, leading listeners to expect a dramatized play, but there was more real drama in this narrative than in most radio plays, however highly-pitched.) This is the story of a brief interval in a railway carriage, during which, it would appear, a murder is forestalled by the wit of the proposed victim, who keeps on talking, as did Scheherezade, in order to postpone the evil moment. Later it transpires that the unobvious reason for his talking the time away is that he is trying to conceal a crime of his own, but as this point doesn’t emerge until the very last sentence of the story, the listener receives it as something of a surprise packet-an excellent example of the "sting in the tail," that targe¢ for which so many writers of mystery yarns aim

but which most of them manage to miss. Since the author has attempted to keep his denouement a secret while allowing the reader a gentle hint here and there about the depth of still waters, it may be imagined that the radio presentation of this story requires no little skill. Too little emotion, and the listener will not get the atmosphere; too much, and wary foliosvers of murder plays will anticipate the climax. It says a great deal for the performance that it was infused with the necessary mystery while the dramatics were not overdone, so,that I, a blase listener to far too many radio murders, was kept in a state of suspense through-out-as a record heard earlier in the evening put it, "the hooks I sat upon were tenter."" However,.as no indication was given of who was responsible for Prelude to Murder, I am unable to thank the narrator who gave me such an exciting time. Technical Excellence HINE INHERITANCE (from 2YA on Friday, April 30) differed refreshingly from most of the plays I have heard in the Radio Theatre series in being technically more akin to the screen than the stage. An elderly woman is writing. to her girlhood friend (flashback to farmyard scene of early childhood) and reviewing her whole life story in the light of subsequent events. The flashback technique has been thoroughly exploited by film writers, but, judging by Thine Inheritance, there is still plenty of room for it in the world of radio, particularly when the sense of past experience is reinforced’ by the author’s talent for almost lyrically evocative language. Technically Thine Inheritance could scarcely be improved upon. Artistically and emotionally considered its theme is. perhaps too exaggerated to be entirely convincing, yet it remains gripping, and there is a lot to be said for an emotional grip that does not positively throttle, and which leaves our critical faculties sufficiently unimpaired to admire technical excellences, Not-so-Grand Opera AFTER hearing two instalments of 2ZB’s Opera for the People I have more or less decided the Opera is best left the prerogative of the diamonded dowager,. and that the proletariat has better things to do with its time. For I certainly did not enjoy the emasculated version of La Bohéme, though I

think perhaps a rousing Soldiers’ Chorus may do something for Faust. But one good thing about Opera for the Peopleit has made me feel retrospectively appreciative of the almost full-time opera we get from the National stations on Sunday nights, for all the imperfectly assimilated wing-side comment

that goes with it. The Producers of Opera for the People seem to have beer more concerned with the story than the music, they have extracted the essential action and comment from its musical matrix and converted it to up-to-the-minute dialogue. But plot is seldom the strong point in Grand Opera, and its rattling skeleton jis more suitably shrouded in the voluminous draperies of recitative than deliberately revealed by the scanty bathing-dress of ordinary dialogue. In any case, Principles apart, there would appear to be little justification for a programme of opera which seemed to me to consist of two parts talking to one of singing. O. Henry Stories HAVE come to take for granted both the manner and the matter of ‘Tusitala’s tale-telling, but I was even more impressed than usual by his recent choice of two O. Henry stories, on Monday "The Furnished Room" and on Wednesday (the ‘Master in Lighter Mood) "The Exact Science of Matrimony", two complementary studies revealing obverse and reverse sides of their creator’s genius. "The Furnished Room" lost none of its pathos in the telling, in fact its bitter backroom flavour was intensified by a slight hesitancy (intentional or unintentional?) in Tusitala’s usually faultless delivery. "The Exatt Science .of Matrimony" was, of course, pure comedy, probably as near as O. Henry ever gets to the man-sitting-on-a-drawing-pin method of Taising a laugh. And Tusitala, by a nice use of hesitation (intentional this time), played the comedy for all it was worth, and the adroit flick of O. Henry’s pen which gave us that inevitable but delicious conclusion "I was" had its suave vocal counterpart in the Master’s Voice, Congratulations, Christchurch As a Dunedin listener I feel it my privilege to congratulate. Christchurch musicians for having made more of their opportunities with Isobel Baillie and the NZBS Symphony Orchestra than did my own city. During Dunedin’s hundredth anniversary, the combination of visiting artist, local soloists, symphony orchestra, and massed choirs was one of the opportunities of a city’s very long lifetime; something grand, impressive, and of really majestic musical value should have emerged. Some memorable things certainly did emerge, as I have

indicated in these columns, and nobody could have been more impressed than I with the festival of enthusiastic musicmaking provided by our musicians, As far as the standard of the works chosen was concerned, we had everything in the musical barometer from "deep depression" to "very fine"-but it was left to another city to give radio listeners the finer effort. Christchurch, magnificently and boldly, decided-not as Dunedin, on a succession of short choral items with one or two cantatas-but on the Bach B Minor Mass, the most beautiful and moving work, surely, that has ever been written. With Isobel Baillie as soprano soloist, Thomas West, of Christchurch, as tenor, and the two Dunedin

singers Mary Pratt and Bryan Drake, the Christchurch Harmonic Society and the National Orchestra combined to present an unforgettable evening of great music, Congratulations, Christchurch, Genius at Bay HE career of a musical genius has for a long time been a favourite theme for play and film. Any sort of genius would do really, but the musical variety is much more spectacular, giving as it does scope for recordings of somebody else’s voice or close-ups of somebody else’s hands playing popular classics on a photogenic violin, Perhaps it was a surfeit of these productions, often (though not always) indifferently done, that made one a little wary of the implications of a Listener programme note which announced "the story of a pianist whose husband was jealous of her genius." But this particular play (by John Gundry) had in addition to this self-explanatory note a title which had no explanation-Camp Ground’s Over Jordan, The incident to which this referred was the pianist’s | visit to a church, where she hears a Negro preacher addressing his congregation. This has a profound influence on her life, and is, as I realised later, the fulcrum of the plot. From here she goes |: steadily down from the fiasco of her return to the concert platform to the final surprising murder of her husband. Not that it wasn’t what many listeners must have been itching to do, but the heroine herself seemed to find it a little. unexpected. Even allowing for an initial prejudice against such dramatizations of genius, this play was well worth hearing. Marco Polo Goes West HE final episode of 2ZB’s Sunday night East With Marco Polo left me feeling as nostalgic as Mr. Fitzpatrick when the time comes for him to say farewell .... For it was, take it for all in all, a very pleasing entertainment, and in spite of the amount of matter crowded into each episode the general effect was curiously leisured. (I’m not sure how many Sunday nights’ entertainment, but it was not till the last instalment that the Polos finally reached the court of the Great Khan Kublai.) The whole thing might be regarded as an apt illus‘ration of the aphorism that it is better o travel interestedly than to arrive. |

Marco Polo is a favourite topic with radio writers (I remember a very good play on his life in the recent Broadcasts to Schools) but this is the most detailed account I have yet listened to. Strangely enough the strong infusion of additional Tomance does not detract from the excitement of the original theme (the actual historical fact is so colourful that additional embroidery does not look out of place) and the dialogue even when it inclines to banality maintains a mannered aloofness and a studied floweriness in keeping with fhe pervading atmosphere of high romance,

7 notes are mot written by the staff of "The Listener" or by any member of the New Zealand Broadcasting Service. They are independent comments for which "The Listener" pays outside contributors.