THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 504, 18 February 1949, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Kun Through The Programmes

Gladys Ripley’s Tour \ /ELLINGTON listeners will be pleased to hear that the first recital of Gladys Ripley’s 1949 tour will be broadcast from 2YA at 8.22 p.m. on Sunday, February 27. This will be a studio recital only, and her first. public concert will be held in Wellington on Thursday, March 3. A second studio recital will be broadcast before this, however, .on Tuesday, March 1, and .details of the programme will be announced later. Gladys Ripley will be remembered by | many listeners for her singing at the _ Centennial Music Festival in 1940, when _her fine contralto voice, was heard to | effect in presentations of Faust with _Isobel Baillie, Heddle Nash, Raymond | Beatty, and Oscar Natzka. Miss Ripley | will travel to New Zealand by air via the United States, and is expected to arrive in Auckland on February 24. She | has recently made a series of new record_ings in England, and among her more /notable concert performances in recent months was a. p®rformance with the Boyd Neel Orchestra of Lennox Berkeley’s new composition Four Poems of Saint Teresa. This concert took place on October 25 at the Chelsea Town Hall. Orchestra and Harp | TN 1945 a group of 16 musicians serving in the Army formed themselves into a light orchestra’ to entertain the | Forces. When they came to broadcast, | Army Regulation (for- which there is no | accounting) prevented them from ap- | pearing under their real names, so they _called themselves The Masqueraders. That title is now firmly established as one of the most popular in British radio. | Under their conductor, Eric Robinson, the combination make a speciality of introducing listeners to compositions that are either new or se!dom played. A series of BBC recordings starting at 1YA at 9.30 pm. on Monday, February 21, will feature The Méesqueraders, with John Cockerill (harpist), under the general title of London Studio Melodies. Inside Out \WeE have always admired our sporting fraternity as healthy extroverts, not afraid to enjoy themselves in a _ fullblooded ‘ wholehearted\ way. We hope that the discussion on ‘representative sport, Fame or the Game? from 2YA on Monday, February 21, at 8.20 p.m., with Teddy Roberts, Miss J. Yeatman, J. W. Holley, and Ron McKenzie as speakers, does not indicate that they are becoming introspective and beginning to ask themselves Why? However, the sportsmen have two sessions (on Monday, February 28, a panel which includes Jack Lamason and C. H. Oliver, will discuss another aspect of sport) in which to resolve their inner conflicts, so perhaps we shall be spared the spectacle of boxers examining their psyches between rounds and football teams analysing their motives. in the interval. "The Sorcerer" from 3YA ‘THIS year’s first Gilbert and Sullivan broadcast from 3YA will be a recorded version of The Sorcerer, to be

presented at 7.30 p.m. on Monday, February 21. This opera was the first really successful result of the great collaboration, apart from the one-act Trial by Jury, and it ran at the Opera Comique from November 17, 1877, to May 24, 1878-a: total of 175 performances, An

interesting point in connection with the plot is the fact that there is no reason in the story why Dr. Daly should fall in love with Aline. Those who drank the love potion fell in love with the first person of the opposite sex encountered, and the vicar Had already seen all the village maidens. The recordings to be used in this broadcast were made in England under the personal supervision of Rupert D’Oyly Carte, and at a later date similar recordings of the nine other most popular Gilbert and Sul‘ivan operas will be presented from this and other stations. Scrannel Pipes? Nature hath fram’d strange fellows in her ice shes will evermore peep through their Poe fe like parrots at a bagpiper F, as Shakespeare suggests, there will be two kinds of people listening to Angus Wattie’s illustrated talk on The Music of the Pipes: The March and the Dance (2YZ, Tuesday, February 22, 7.15 p.m.)-those who like the pipes and those who like to laugh at them-we can only hope that they won’t have to share a radio, But even the irreverent have probably sometimes wondered why the Drum-Major gets all the glory and the Pipe-Major only stripes. And what does the Drum-Major whisper to his men in between the items? Perhaps Piper Wattie will explain. Supernatural Whimsy T is probably significant of something that over the past few years we have turned our attention from the seamier side of the supernatural to take a more whimsical view of "that undiscovered country." Necromancers and werewolves have given way to more likeable characters such as the impersonaf Mr. Brink and the ubiquitous Mr. Jordan. G. Murray Milne’s play The Waiting Room is in this latter tradition. A supernatural Statistician is careless with his equipment (spectacles which reveal how near a person ,is to death) and merely to satisfy his half-sceptical curiosity Victor Watson appropriates them. What happens after that may be heard from 2YA on Wednesday, February 23, at 8.0 p.m. The Waiting Room is an NZBS production,

eS Pa ES ce te Peep ee Sree ae ee Interview With a Poet N Thursday, February 24, at 7.15 p.m., 2YA will broadcast an inter‘view with a New Zealand poet, C. R. Allen. Mr. Allen is not, strictly speaking, a "Famous New Zealander" since he was born in London and completed his education at Cambridge, but the years in between he spent in New Zealand and most of the year since Cambridge he has lived in Dunedin, so that Parochial pride is permissible. Mr. Allen has written poems, plays, and novels which (as well as winning several competitions) have earned him a laureateship of the Literary and Artistical Association of France. In the 2YA interview he will recite some of his verse and tell something about his life and work Another Medtner Programme AT 9.22 p.m. on Sunday, February 27, ‘*" 4YA_ will present another hour of music by the Russian composer Nicholas Medtner, The works selected are from the second volume of compositions issued by the Medtner Society, and include his Piano Concerto No. 3 in E Minor, Improvisation, Op. 31, No. 1, and the Son-ata-Vocalise for Soprano and Piano. This sonata is based on Goethe’s Sacred Grove, which speaks of the Graces descending from Olympus to watch the wood-nymphs dance in a grove near which the poet lies concealed. When the poet tells the story of what he has seen to the Muses, they counsel him to speak of such things discreetly, ‘and Medtner, making use of the human voice as an instrument, also speaks of these things in a sympathetic manner. The Third Piano Concerto, completed in 1943, is subtitled "Ballade," since the first movement was inspired by the Lermontov ballad "Song of the Roussalka." The work is performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Issay Dobrowen, with the composer at the piano,