THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 510, 1 April 1949, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

! A Run Through The Programmes

Don’t Shoot the Producer TO the enthusiast who wants to "get a concert going" the cynic sometimes remarks, "Yes, but how are you going to stop it?"--and anybody who has had the job of concert’ promotion, even in the smallest amateur way, has found there is something more than mere acidity in that remark. The experienced will know that there are certain people who are "musts"; they've always .been included and to miss them. out would be to miss their relations and friends from the audience. And there are the people who, at the very idea of appearing on the stage, become temperamental -a state which has been aptly described as bad temper too old to be spanked. If the show is a "flop": the producer must be prepared to take the blame, and if it goes with a swing, then he.or she is "expected to give the total credit to the performers.~ We don’t know how much of this angle will be dealt with in a coming talk from 4YA, but there is bound to be a good deal of interest in the item at 2.1 p.m. on Monday, April 4, entitled "So You’re Going to Arrange a Concert." This will be heard in the Countrywoman’s Magazine of the Air series, conducted by Mavis McAra. The featured speaker will be Mrs. J. M. Moncur. Test-Tube Horsepower NYONE who has been dallying with the S Siz of'running his motor car on atomic ergy can give that thought a long rest, said Sir John Cockroft, when lecturing .recently to an audience of London school children on nuclear energy. He explained that any car which was made to rely on such a form of propulsion would also have to carry about 50 tons of concrete to protect the driver and passengers. In the early part of 1947 the BBC broadcast a series of talks about atomic energy that mgde a deep impression on fisteners in Britain; and recently, through some of those BBC transcriptions, the NZBS has given New Zealand listeners some _ information about: atomic energy and its military uses. From 3YA at 8.27 p.m. on Tuesday, April 5 (the fourth programme in this series) the theme will change to the peaceful uses of atomic power. The first speaker will be Professor P. M. S. Blackett, Professor of Physics in the University of Manchester, who will say something about what investigators can be reasonably sure of finding out within | a few years. He will be followed by Sir Henry Dale, formerly Director of the National Institute for Medical Research, discussing the uses of atomic energy in medicine and research. He will raise the question whether men of science are to be left to explore these great vistas of new and beneficent knowledge in peace. History in Otago ‘TOWARDS the end of last year the NZBS Mobile Unit -spent several months touring Otago in search of recordings of historical and musical value. The large collection of material which

resulted has since then been made up into a series of programmes called History and Harmony in Otago, and the first of these will be broadcast from 4YA at 9.30 p.m. on Monday, April 4. Altogether, ‘over 30 half-hour programmes have been selected about the various towns and districts visited, and they deal

with their musical life, which is illustrated in recordings of choirs, brass -bands, and pipe bands, and their early history as described by descendants of the pioneers. No attempt is made to discuss the more modern development of the towns, but with their early days an attempt is made to present a coverage of the province’s history as a whole. In the story of Waikouaiti, for instance (as told in the first two programmes), the main theme is the life of Johnny Jones; in the Palmerston programmes the early coaching days are concentrated on; in most of Central Otago the story is of gold; while-in places like Milton and Oamaru the programmes describe the beginnings of agricultural and pastoral life. World Events ‘] HE first of a series of periodical discussions on world events between B. J. Garnier and E. A, Olssen will shortly be heard from 4YA. These sessions will be similar in some ways to the Lookout programmes now being heard on Saturday gvenings from the YA stations, but as they ate given only at six-week intervals, an attempt is being made to give a broader interpretation of the general current of events than can be obtained in a weekly review. B. J. Garnier is already familiar as a contributor to Lookout, while E. A. Olssen is a lec-turer-in Political Science at Otago University. The first broadcast of World Events will be at 9.30 p.m. on Friday, April 8, and as the discussions are a part of 4YA’s winter talks series extending into mid-November, they will ng be heard from any other station. Birth of a Nation . HE latest scheme to harness the waters of the Nile was described a recent message from London. A series of dams on the upper tributaries is planned, the first of them, to control the Blue Nile, being below Lake Tana in Ethiopia, a second on the White Nile at the outlet of Lake Victoria, and a third to make a reservoir out of Lake Albert. When the whole system is operating it will be possible to hold back the Blue Nile while the White Nile is flowing, t

thus smoothing out the flow of the seasons, and increasing the cultivated area in-Egypt by a million and a half acres. Because the White Nile flows through the Sudan that country has always had an effect on Egypt’s, economy. Its. conquest by Egyptians in the 19th Century, the rise to power of the Mahdi and his fanatical adherents, the killing of Gordon at Khartoum, and the subsequent overthrow of the Mahdi by Kitchener, are only incidents in the troubled history of this supposed birthplace of the black races. Listeners to 1YA will hear something. of its development in four talks by F. J. Dobbs, which he has titled The Birth of a Nation, Sudan. The first of them will be broadcast at + 7.15 p.m. on Thursday, April 17, and is subtitled "The Land of the People." "The Music Makers" LGAR’S ode The Music Makers, for contralto solo, choir, and orchestra, was first produced at the Birmingham Festival in 1912 with the composer conducting. The work is a setting of Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s poem, and comes chronologically between the Second Symphony of 1911 and the symphonic study Falstaff, which was first performed at the Leeds Festival in 1913. A recording of The Music Makers was recently made by the BBC when it was performed at a Promenade Concert in the Royal Albert Bes London, the attists being Mary Jarred (contralto), the Alexandra Choir, and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent. This 40-minute recording will be broadcast from 2XN at 7.8 p.m. on Sunday, April 10. The soloist Mary Jarred is a native of Yorkshire, and has the reputation of being one of England’s finest operatic singers. She has won particularly -high praise in recent years for her singing in The Ring, and for her interpretation of the title tole in Gluck’s Orpheus.