THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 499, 14 January 1949, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Timaru’s First Week AT 8.0 p.m. on Tuesday, January 18, Station 3XC Timaru will make its first broadcast. It should be an important moment for all local residents, and mark the beginning of many years of good listening. Following the official opening, a musical programme will be heard in which Timaru artists will. take part. During the first week, commercial programmes in the mornings (and for an hour in the-evenings) will include such serials as Anne of Green Gables, Imperial Lover, Scarlet Harvest, as well as popular sessions such as The Junior Naturalist. Music suited to all tastes will be broadcast, from Crosby and Kostelanetz to the classics as played in the BBC series London Studio Concerts. The first episodes of several other BBC programmes will be heard during the week-Crime Gentlemen Please, a comedy-thriller featuring Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne (at 8.0 p.m. on Wednesday), Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh (at 9.35 p.m. on Saturday), This Correspondence Must Now Cease (at 10.30 a.m. on Sunday), Larry the Lamb, a BBC children’s programme (at 6.30 p.m.) and ‘Music for Romance, with Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth (at 9.5 p.m.) on the same day. Other programmes of special interest include Fog Over the Baltic, an NZBS short story which will be read at 8.0 p.m. on Friday, Round About New Zealand, containing recordings made by the NZBS Mobile Unit, at 9.35 p.m. on Friday, and "Churchill," one of a series entitled Achievement, at 8.45 p.m. on Saturday. London Dance Bands RECORDINGS of several of Britain’s most popular dance bands were recently issued by the BBC Transcription Service, and in them listeners are able to hear-and dance to-bands that represent the latest trends in dance music in Britain. Every effort has been made to capture the distinctive atmosphere of combinations like those of Carroll Gibbons; Ted Heath, and Chappie D’Amato, and at 7.50 p.m. on Monday, January 17, 2YA will broadcast a programme in the series by Eric Winstone and his orchestra. This group is made up mainly on orthodox lines-five saxophones, three trumpets, three trombones, piano, drums, bass-with the addition of a vibraphone, and, of course, vocalists. Winstone has built up the popularity of the orchestra largely through his insistence on really fitst-class musical arrangements, an understandable attitude when one remembers he has written a number of successful tunes himself. Watching the Kitty CE a bowler, always a bowler, they say; and the increasing popularity of the sport is indicated by the fact that for this year’s championships (at present being held at Auckland) over 2,009 entries were received, which is more than twice last year’s number. With the closing stages of the championships approaching, and matters coming, as you might say, to a head, all the friends and relatives of the gallant 2,000 (or what’s left of them) will now be gluing

their ears to the family radio at 9.30 p.m. each night when the main National stations broadcast the day’s results. The championships end about January 26, and commentaries on the final matches will probably be broadcast by 1YA. Es For Bridge Players ‘HERE are more ways of brushing. up on one’s bridge than by reading Ely Culbertson, and one of the best methods for Canterbury women should be to tune in to the BBC programme Bridge on the Air, which starts in 3YA’s Mainly for Women session at 2.40 p.m.

on Monday, January 17. There are six episodes of Bridge on the Air. The first two are straight-out professional matches, with the hands and the play described, thus enabling listeners to follow the games on their own tables. The remainder deal with listeners’ questions, and include discussions on bidding. Unfortunately there is no indication in the script as to whether a kick on the shins from one’s fair partner means "Four No Trumps,’ or simply "You Haven't a Hope of a Grand Slam with the Hand that I’m Going to Lay Down for You." Sunday Night Music | ISTENERS who look forward to a quiet Sunday evening programme which is entertaining without making demands on the audience will probably enjoy Journey Into Romance, which starts from 1YD at 8.0 p.m. on Sunday, January 23. Described as "an excursion in words and music," the script was written by C. Gordon Glover and produced by Howard Agg (who was responsible for Gilbert and Sullivan: The Story of a Great Partnership). Those taking part include Mantovani and his Orchestra, Kay Hammond, John Clem/ ents, Hedda Ippen, Olaf Olsen, Harry Isaacs and York Bowen. The programme consists of six half-hour episodes and will be heard from 1YD each Sunday until the end of February. Among the items is a scene from Noel Coward’s Private Lives, in which the parts of Amanda Prynne and Elyot Chase are played by Kay Hammond and John Clements. The song "Some Day I'll Find You" is sung by Helen Clare, and Harry Isaacs and York Bowen play "Romance" frem Rachmanineff’s: Suite for Two Pianos. American Scene FRIEND of ours, a teacher, once remarked that growing up is an interesting and necessary process but he didn’t see why adolescents have to be "all mixed up, all of the time." We

may say without offence, because chronologically it’s true, that America is now adolescent, and to judge from the number and noise of the official and selfappointed jiminy crickets who are examining its conscience at the moment, apparently considerably mixed up for at least some of the time. We don’t think for a moment that Mrs. Sophie McWilliams is one of those, and listeners who tune in to American Interlude, a series of six talks which she is giving from 3YZ, need not fear any soulsearching. Crick-neck City (Monday, January 17, 2.15 p.m.), is the title of the first talk--which -would seem to indicate that her eye was mainly on the physical aspects of the American scene. "Dooble Ong-Tong" There was an old man of Boolong Who frightened the birds with his song. It wasn’t the words That frightened the birds, But the horrible dooble ong-tong. HE person who did most to popularise limericks like this was Edward Lear, Victorian author of The Book of Nonsense, and a man whose own life was a kind of dooble ong-tong, for a personal tragedy lay behind his popular fame as a humorist. Lear was the 21st (and youngest) child of a wealthy stockbroker, and from his earliest years he was haunted by the recurrent visitations of a mild form of epilepsy-he called it his Demon-which drove him throughout his life ‘to wander in many countries, never finding the peace of mind that would let him settle down. Yet his personality and quaint sense of humour made him popular with children and grown-ups alike, and he was a talented Jandscape painter with influential patrons. In the BBC programme The Pilgrimage of Mr, Lear (to be broadcast from 3YA at 9.50 p.m. on Sunday, January 23) Mictrael Wharton gives,a radio impression of Lear, and of the travels which took him through some of the loveliest parts of Europe and Asia Minor.