THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 482, 17 September 1948, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Handel at the Proms ANOTHER series of recordings from "" the Sir Henry Wood Promenade Concerts-this time from the 53rd season held in. the Royal Albert Hallbrings listeners not only great music worthily played, but also the authentic atmosphere of that vast hall, packed with audiences that had often waited long hours to fill all the seats and stand shoulder to shoulder in the great central arena. The first programme in this series is an all-Handel one, with the London Symphony.-Orchestra conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent. The overture in D minor is followed by the Coronation Anthem "The King Shall Rejoice," one of four anthems written by Handel for the Coronation of George Il. in 1727. The Water Music Suite, written for a Royal procession on the Thames, and so approved by George I. that he commanded it to be played before and after supper, comes next. David Franklin (bass) is then heard in the aria and recitative "Arm, arm, ye brave" from Judas Maccabaeus, and G. D. Cunningham in the Organ Concerto in G. Finally the orchestra and the Alexandra Choir present the Plague Choruses and the Final Chorus from Israel in Egypt. This programme will be heard from 2YA at 7.30 p.m. on Tuesday, September 21.

Music by William Boyce WE all know Heart of Oak (even if many of us still think that the Heart should be plural), but apart from the ballet suite The Prospect Before Us, we don’t know very much more of music by William Boyce, who was an English composer of the 18th Century. Boyce wrote charming music of great clarity and did an immense amount of work even after he became deaf in his early manhood. He was a notable composer for the stage and the church, and he brought together a great collection of the finest compositions of the English church composers under the title of Cathedral Music. The Sadler’s Wells Orchestra will be heard in a recording from 2XN at 8.35 p.m. on Tuesday, September 21, of The Prospect Before Us. Constant Lambert, who conducts the orchestra, arranged this work as a ballet. Fantasy with Flute Obbligato N artist-selfish yet a genius-foreed to the conclusion that he wuld be nothing but a* failure in the things that really mattered to him, decided that suicide was the only way out. But in this, too, he failed, and in the twilit interval between life and death, his char- acter was reborn. Though he did not return to the palette and brushes, he became a worker in a more commonplace medium which nevertheless allowed him to achieve results of great beauty. That, shortly, is the story of the radio play, One Day in the Luxemburg, by C. Gordon Glover and Modwena Sedgwick. This NZBS production is unusual in that the music incidental to the development of the fantasy was specially written by Bessie Pollard, of

the NZBS staff, and is sung by a male quartet, with flute. One Day in the Luxemburg will~be heard from 2YA at 9.32 p.m. on Sunday, September 26. Words, Words, Words! F a man says "the capitalists are exploiting the workers" what does "exploiting’" mean in the context? Isn't the speaker really asking us to disapprove of people called "capitalists" by using an emotional word without giving any specific information about them? Sim-

ilarly, if a man says "Communism is a dangerous and subversive doctrine" isn’t he simply taking. it for granted that we disapprove of "dangerous and stbversive" things, and identifying communism with them without giving any specific reasons? With examples like these, H. Hudson, lecturer in philosophy at Victoria University College, shows, in four talks from 2YA, how words can be used to bemuse us, and how the growing complexity of language and our tendency to misuse abstract or emotive words can hinder clear thinking. The first talk entitled, See What I Mean? will be heard from 2YA at 7.15 p.m. on Monday, September 20. "Language," he says, "is by no means the safe and highly efficient instrument which we _ normally assume it to be,’ and listeners may agree after they have heard him out. New Radio Play « MYSTERY play which recently reached the NZBS from the BBC is The Six Stones, featuring Valentine Dyall, who became well known to listeners as the Man in Black of the Appointment With Fear series. Dyall was," indeed, playing the Man in Black when the King and Queen, with "Princess Margaret, watched the broadcast in the studio during a visit to the BBC in December last. In this latest thriller, written by Michael Davies, Dyall is both narrator and principal character. The story, which is set on the coast of Cornwall-a location greatly favoured when an uncanny atmosphere is required-is said to work up to as tense a climax as anyone could wish. . The Six Stones will be heard {rom 4YZ at 8.0 p.m. on Saturday, September 25. For "Amber" Addicts HY do we read novels? What, for instance, do the bemused addicts of long historical novels like Forever Amber or Gone With the Wind get out of their reading apart from the vicarious thrill of romance and a few hours’ escape from the routine of ordinary, everyday

existence? Picture the errant housewife at eleven in the morning, the dishes unwashed, the beds unmade, the floors unswept — thumbing ecstatically through the pages of some tasty morsel by Alison Uttley or D. E. Stevenson. Is that good for her home or family life? In other words, is the novel-reading habit, when carried to extremes, a good one or a bad one, or does it just not matter? A series of fow talks which might do something towartés explaining questions like these will. be heard from 4YA starting next Tuesdey, September 21, at 10.0 am. The title of the talks is For the Confirmed Novel Reader, and the speaker is Margaret Dalziell, headmistress of St. Hilda’s College, Dunedin. Knight of the Rose F all the librettists Richard Strauss employed for his 13 operas, Stefan Zweig caused him the most trouble and Hugo von Hofmannsthal was the most successfyl. Strauss’s banishment from the Nazi musical world was partly caused by a letter requesting a libretto from Zweig, who had already refused once because he was a Jew. "The opera will take two years to complete," Strauss said, "and by then the Nazis will be forgotten.’ When the Gestapo saw that sneer they were not slow to act. For a lesser man it would have meant the concentration camp or death; for Strauss it was musical exile. But Hofmannsthal, who died in 1928, escaped such things, and the libretto he wrote for Strauss’s greatest opera, Der Rosenkavalier, is amongst the finest in the world. Although the opera’s setting-18th Century Vienna-is, according to Eric Blom, too heavy and highly wrought, he thinks the music has a glamour and pointed allusiveness that makes The Knight of the Rose one of the most fascinating operas, whose uncertainty of style is redeemed by glowing beauty and sincerity of feeling. A recorded version of this opera will be heard from 1YA at 8.15 p.m. on Sunday, September 26.