THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 468, 11 June 1948, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Captive Hearts T’S not often that we get a chance of listening to a discussion like that in the BBC programme The Spirit in the Cage, in which the speakers are three men who gather round the microphone to describe how their experiences in solitary confinement during the war affected their outlook on life. They are Captain Peter Churchill, Captain Louis Lee-Graham, and Colonel R. H. Stevens. Churchill was captured in occupied France when acting as liaison officer to a Resistance group in 1943, and he was in solitary confinement for more than 300 days. Lee-Graham was shot down over enemy territory in 1942 when he was travelling on a special mission, spent 20 months in solitary, was condemned to death, and finally rescued by the Americans. Stevens was ambushed on the Dutch frontier in 1939 and chained to the wall of his cell for two years, followed by three-and-a-half years in Dachau _ concentration camp. The chairman is Captain Harry Ree, a former Resistance man who was lucky enough not to be captured. The Spirit in the Cage will be heard from 2YH at 4.30 pm. this Sunday, June 13. Gilbertian Topic But the privilege and pleasure That we treasure beyond measure Is to run on little errands for the Ministers of State (The Gondoliers). SOME people, however, think there are 4 too many employees of the State running around these days, and_ this, added to the fact that in France they are talking about cutting down the number of civil servants, gives topicality to the subject to be discussed from 3YA next week, That Bureaucracy is a Menace to the Future Progress of This Country. The modern trend towards a concentration of administrative power in government departments, and the consequent intrusion of officialdom into spheres traditionally regarded as outside the province of government, is a subject for heated.argument these days, and 3YA’s discussion should raise-if it doesn’t answer-plenty of controversial points. It will be heard at 7.56 p.m. on Tuesday, June 15. Farewell Appearance ON Tuesday next, June 15, at 8.0 p.m., 4YA will broadcast a celebrity concert by the NZBS National Orchestra (conducted by Andersen Tyrer) and the two visiting English singers, Janet Howe and Arthur Servent. This concert will be the final appearance of the Orchestra in Dunedin for the present season and the occasion will in a sense represent the finale to the musical side of the Centennial celebrations. The Orchestra will open the programme with the Overture to The Magic Flute, followed by Harty’s arrangement of Handel’s Water Music suite. Arthur Servent will be heard in arias from The Magic Flute and The Valkyrie, and Janet Howe in arias from Debussy’s L’Enfant Prodigue and Les Huguenots, by Meyerbeer. Wagner will also be represented in the orchestral programme and the concert will conclude with Cesar Franck’s Symphony

in D Minor. From Dunedin the Orchestra and the two soloists will move on to Christchurch, where rehearsals will begin for the Carmen season which opens there on June 24. Schubert Cycle "\WHY so sad?" Schubert’s friends asked him shortly after his visit to Graz in 1827. Schubert's reply was to invite them up to the house he was staying at to hear him sing what he described as "a garland of lugubrious

songs" which would quickly, he said, make them understand his melancholy mood. In a voice filled with emotion he sang his song-cycle The Winter Journey, saying afterwards that the songs affected him more deeply than any others he had written. He had composed them several months before to poems by Wilhelm Muller, which tell of the wanderings and growing despair of a rejected lover, and their sombre spirit seems almost to have foreshadowed Schubert’s death, which occurred shortly afterwards. The Winter Journey will be sung from 2YA next week by the Auckland baritone Stewart Harvey, accompanied by Frederick Page at the piano. The first 12 songs will be heard at 8.0 p-m. on Tuesday, June 15, and the remainder at 8.0 p.m. on Thursday, June +7. H Money for Jam \ [RITE a Tune for £2,000, the session which 4YZ will broadcast at 10.0 p.m. on Thursday, June 17, is not (as might be imagined) an audienceparticipation programme, but the story of how two middle-aged women won a small fortune with a waltz-tune. The story goes back to the summer of 1945, when the BBC started a series of broadcasts from the Hammersmith Palais de Danse-a popular London dance-hall-in which Lou Praeger and his Band played dance tunes submitted by amateur musicians. The contest ran for 17 weeks, there were £50 prizes for the most popular tunes in each heat, and bigger prizes were awarded-on the basis of a postcard vote-for the best entries submitted during the whole contest. Over half-a-million postal ballots were cast and the winning tune was a gay quick waltz called Cruising Down the River, written by Eily Beadell and Nellie Tollerton. It has since sold over 200,000 copies. Write a Tune for £2,000 not only tells the story of the contest, but introduces listeners to some of the best tunes submitted, played (as in the first instance) by Lou Praeger and his Band..

The Joke’s on the Bishop OE BLACKADDER, the notorious highwayman, has been caught at last, but before he is led to the gallows he insists that the last rites can be performed only by his old friend, the Bishop of Radchester. The bishop is persuaded to attend, but on the appointed day there appears from the crowd one Kitty Brown, from Bristol, an old sweetheart of Joe, who has nursed a secret love for him all these years and now wants to marry him and lead him away from his life of crime. According to an old tradition, a gallows wedding can save the condemned man from death, and that is what happens to Blackadder. The bishop performs the ceremony, the crowd applauds, and Black Joe is led off to his life of domestic bliss. But there’s a catch in the proceedings somewhere, and it turns out that the joke’s on the bishop after all! If you want to find out what happens at the end of thjs fantasy on the romantic days of 18th Century England, tune in to 2YC at 8.0 p.m. on Sunday, June 20, to Kitty Brown of Bristol, an Eden Philpotts play produced by the NZBS. First Night a Fiasco "LAST night La Traviata was a fiasco," Verdi said to a friend after the first performance of his opera in 1853. "Is the fault mine," he asked, "or the singers’? Only time will decide." Time has been kind to the composer, and it is now generally agreeq that the failure of that first performance was due to the incapacity of the singers, and more particularly to the corpulence of Mme. Donatelli, the: soprano who sang Violetta, who could present little illusion of being consumptive, as the role demanded. La Traviata contains the most sensitive and moving music of Verdi's middle period, and a recording of the opera will be heard from 4YA at 8.15 p.m. on Sunday, June 20.