THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 496, 24 December 1948, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Keeping Up With It | JSUALLY when there’s to be a commentary on a race meeting, we decide to prop the rake up against the | old apple-tree, step out of the gardening /boots (lost when marching out of the Army) and listen-in. And though gen|erally umable to say off-hand whether any particular horse is a galloper or a trotter, we always find it stimulating to | listen to the almost unbelievable crescendo reached by the announcer as the field moves up the straight. But now | we're all agog, because we see by the | programmes that somebody at 1YA is |Teally going to do the job properly and | make a running commentary on the Auckland Racing Club’s meeting at Ellerslie on Monday, December 27, and _on the Auckland Trotting Club’s meet‘ing at Alexandra Park the following_ | day-and while the meetings la8t. Now, if we were that announcer . . . but 20, that’s a silly thought even for the silly season. We'll just stay under the _apple-tree. Not as Others Are HERE was once a woman who, confronted with the task of amusing her two small children on a wet afternoon, decided that they should make some chocolate fudge together. Just when all the ingredients were ready, the telephone went, and -when she returned-half-an-hour later-she found that the children had made mud-pies with the sugar on the floor. So she packed them off to bed. The fudge was thén an enormous success for, as she said, it was so peaceful making it without the child-ren-who were, by all accounts, normal and entirely unexceptional. Now had this parent been modern, she would have entered whole-heartedly into the spirit of the game, and helped the children convert the mud pies scientifically back into chocolate fudge. As it was she probably sent them off with a sense of frustration, which (as everyone knows) causes more permanent hartn than’ a_ fudge-induced stomach-ache. Though it is doubtful if mud or fudge will enter into jit, there may be several interesting things to hear, and perhaps some helpful hints, in a Health in the Home talk called Exceptional Children, from 1YA at 10.55 a.m. on. Tuesday, December 28. Canada in Music HE _recently-composed symphonic suite, From Sea to Sea, by Alexander Brott, will be broadcast from 2YA at 8.0 p.m. on Tuesday, December 28. This work, which was specially commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, attempts to. portray in music the whole spirit of Canada itself, its provirices, peoples, and landscapes. It is in’ five movements. The first, "Maritimes." is written around Novia Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, regions dominated physically and spiritually by the Atlantic Ocean which forms their eastern boundaries. The second movement, "Quebec." evokes the atmosphere of the French-Canadian peoples, the third is about Ontario, and the fourth about the three prairie provinces sometimes described as "the granary of the world."

The fifth movement deals with British Columbia, in some ways a microcosm of the whole country. From Sea to Sea is played by the CBC Symphony Orchestra and conducted by the composer. It will be repeated from 2YC at 8.0 p.m. on Sunday, January 9. Culinary Counsel HE Home Science people have a talk from 2YZ this week called Answers to Common Bottling Problems, which, ‘at this time of the year, seems apt for a variety of reasons. Whether the contents are for consumption by the tumbler, as an accompaniment to & breakfast cereal or for spreading on bread, bottling is an art. In the first

instance-too often for the family’s con-venience-it is preceded by the exclusive use of the laundry copper as a brewing-vat; and even when everything has gone as per recipe the result is still harg to "keep." But it may be presumed that Hawke’s Bay listeners will be treated to an explanation of the other kind of bottlirig. And that is how hapless housewives may trap and later serve appetisingly, and in the right proportions, the numerous vitamins and the elusive minerals that normally. escape on to the plate when one is peeling fruit, and disappear irretrievably down the: kitchen sink. Some tips for this altogether commendable task will be heard at 10.0 a.m. on Wednesday, December 29. : Gilded. Cage [}{ ERMIONE GINGOLD contributes what she’ is pleased to describe as a little intellectual interlude in the BBC’s radio night club show The Gilded Cage. She gives a keyboard talk in which she tells listeners things about the great composers which she is sure they’ve never heard before. . Others in this pleasant little programme are Jean Cavall, in French songs, and Cliff Gordon with various impersonations, Reginald Pursglove and his Orchestra also take part. The Gilded Cage, which comes from the BBC Transcription Service, will be heard from 3YA at 8.26 p.m. on Thursday, December 30. Sandler and a Contralto MENDELSSOHN’S O For the Wings ot a Dove, so well known as an air for boy sopranos, is played as a violin solo by the late Albert Sandler in the next Grand Hotel programme from 4YZ, The guest artist in this BBC production is Freda Townson (contralto), and the Palm Court Orchestra play selections from The Quaker Girl and a work by Reginald King. Freda Townson started

her musical: training as a pianist, but when she had spent a little time at the Royal Academy of Music in London, she discovered she had a good voice. She was given her first chance by Sir Henry Wood ,at the Torquay Music Festival and was later engaged by him to sing at the Promenade Concerts in London. Since then she has sung at many festivals and with some of the principal British choral societies. The programme will be heard at 7.45 p.m. on THUTSsY, December 30. It is Resolved... "HE business of making good resolutions at the New Year is obviously the outcome of a guilty conscience, and for that reason the custom is probably as old as the Fall of Man, according to A. R. D. Fairburn. The calendar, he believes, makes one aware with a sudden jolt that another giant stride has been taken towards oblivion. To use his own words, "we at once have a feeling of being a rat in Time’s great trap. We look back over the past year and realise with dismay what a terrible mess we have made of it... ." But 1949 recalls other ’49’s, as listeners will hear when Fairburn gives a talk on New Year Resolutions from the four ZB stations on Friday, December 31. He will present a few historical facts culled from various parts of the world, and offer, not necessarily as a guide for others, one or two resolutions of his own-not to grow a beard, not to start a Society for Closer Relations with Canterbury, not to eat biscuits in bed, and to give anything over and above 20 guineas paid him for a thousand words for pyblication or broadcasting to the Ali Baba Society which devotes itself to feeding, clothing, and educating the sons and daughters of impoverished medical men. These, and. sundry. other conceits, will be heard from 1ZB at 11.30 p.m., 2ZB at 10.45 p.m., 3ZB at 7.45 pm., and 4ZB at 6.30 p.m.