THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 464, 14 May 1948, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Donald McCullough [DURING his three weeks’ stay in this country, Donald McCullough recorded for the NZBS a series of talks, the first of which will be heard from 1YA during the forthcoming week. On Monday, May 17, at 7.0 p.m., he will talk about Japan, a country which he visited on his way out to-New Zealand, and on Wednesday, May 19, at 7.15 p.m., he will tell The Story of Punch, the famous English magazine with which he has been connected for a number of years. The following week he will speak on the English countryside in the Morning Talk session at 10.40 a.m. on Wednesday, May 26. His other talks include several on the Brains Trust and one on the artist Fougasse, with whom he collaborated on a book.

Unconventional IBELIUS’S Violin «Concerto, composed in 1903 between his Second and Third Symphonies, is considered one of the outstanding works of this century. It treats the concerto*form in an unconventional manner, opposing brilliant solo passages with reticent and sombre orchestration. "Only the broad and melodic slow movement follows , tradition," the critic Olin Downes says. "In the first, the violin enters with the effect -of improvisation. The rhapsodic nature of the music is sustained and enriched by extensive cadenzas . . . while the orchestra carries on symphonic developments. The final movement is a curious species of rondo, in which the violin sweeps and skirls over an accompaniment of intentional monotony, of screams like a banshee over the tumult. The end is a sudden change from D Minor to D Major with great shouts of the brass and a mood of defiance." The concerto will be heard from 4YA at 8.15 p.m. on Monday, May 17, in Professor Galway’s session Masterpieces of Music. The Game’s On ROM all accounts (an acclimatisation society official is reported to have said the other day) pheasants seemed wilder than usual this year. We don’t doubt that. They’re generally pretty angry

round about this season. After the greater part of the year in sanctuary, a period as a target would make any bird take umbrage. + We, personally, have for some time lacked the hardihood to plough through wet fern, or do a dawn freeze in a mai-mai. But when the guns come home, the spoils of the chase are dumped on the wash-house floor,

the feathers are removed and the oven gives out that appetising smell, we offer homage to the marksmen and deal practically with the dish. Yet even the finest and fattest bird that ever dropped into a lagoon can lose its charm in the preparation for table, so listeners who are lucky enough to be presented with a bird or two should tune in to an A.C.E, talk from 2YA on Wednesday, May 19, at 10.25 a.m., called "Cooking New Zealand Game." Black Cats and All That EOPLE who throw salt over their shoulders, touch wood, get uneasy on Friday, the 13th, shudder all over when they break a mirror or. inadvertently walk under a ladder, and hang horseshoes on their back doors, will probably feel their ears begin to burn after they

have tuned in to Dorothy Freed’s talk from 2YA at 10.25 a.m. next Thursday, May 20. Her subject is How We Got Our Superstitions, and she explains how all these apparently irrational actions and aversions of ours actually came about. The strange emotions excited by black cats, white horses, dead spiders, hawthorne in the house, and so on, are just nonsensical, she says. And those old wedding superstitions too, like throwing confetti, carrying the bride across the threshold, tying a shoe to the back of the honeymoon car and all the rest of it, are simply ridiculous relics of the days when men and women were barely out of the Neanderthal stage. But unfortunately superstition, like growing old, is one of those things we never really get over. Spotlight on Darkest Africa THAT is the historical difference between Bushman, Hottentot, and Bantu? How do the tribes of Central Africa live to-day, and how have their lives been influenced and changed (if at. all) by the impact of Western Civilisation? What have modern methods of medicine and education done to improve the lot of Africa’s natives, and how are Christian missionaries assisting the authorities in this task? Some of the answers

a to these questions will be given by Dr. Kingsley E. Mortimer in a series of four talks from 2YA called Spotlight on Central Africa. The first of the series will be heard at 7.15 p.m. on Friday, May 21. State and Literature NE afternoon two summers ago, on the porch of an Auckland home, a poet, an author, a composer, a shortstory writer and two journalists were enjoying the last of the day’s sun and discussing in desultory fashion the pros and cons of State patronage of literature. In the intervening period, with the establishment of the State Literary Fund, the subject has become of increasing interest and it is not surprising that 1YA has chosen the topic for discussion in its Let’s Talk It Over session next Sunday, May 23, at 4.0 p.m. One of the group mentioned, the short-story writer Maurice Duggan, will be on the panel and associated with him will be John A. Lee, novelist and politician; A. R. D. Fairburn, poet and critic; and Dr. S. Musgrove, Professor of English at Auckland University College. Cho-Cho and Pinkerton IKE Carmen and one or two other now-famous operas, Puccini’s Madame Butterfly was nearly killed at its d@utset by public hostility. The first performance was practically hissed off the stage, and Puccini ("discouraged but not dismayed’"’). had to recast the work. He deleted a few objectionable numbers, cut the long final act in two, and three months later started the revised opera off on its long and triumphant career. The Riot of Madame Butterfly has some topicality to-day, concerned as it is with the amorous aspirations of a _ certain Lieutenant Pinkerton of the United States Navy; who marries a Japanese girl, Cho-Cho-San (Madame Butterfly), but later leaves her, returns to America, and marries an American girl. After she realises the hopeless position in which she has been placed, Cho-Cho commits suicide by falling on her father’s sword, A recorded version of Madame Butterfly will be heard from 1YA at 8.15 p.m, on Sunday, May 23.