THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 515, 6 May 1949, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

English Refugee SOON after the BBC’s commentator, Marjorie Banks, had produced a programme about the displaced persons of Europe, she received a letter from a Mrs. Riedl, who said, "I am a Brit-ish-born wife of a German. I became a displaced person-one of the millions of refugees who wandered for three months across Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany and_ Austria." Marjorie Banks got in touch with Mrs. Riedl, now a schoolmistress in a London suburb, and heard from her the story which was later broadcast as ] Married a German. It describes how Violet Paddington of London married Johann Riedl, of Karlsruhe, in 1938, and went to live im Hitler's Germany. Johann Ried! was an anti-Nazi, but he was caught up in Hitler’s war machine, and the couple were soon liXjng in Poland as part of the occupying forces. Then, as the war turned , against Germany, Mrs. Riedl became a refugee, and she went through experiences that might have been disastrous to’ anyone less level-headed. Her story tells, more vividly than any fiction, what it means to be an ordinary housewife living in Eastern or Central Europe when war comes. I Married a German will be broadcast from 4YZ at 4.0 p.m. on Sunday, May 8. Bax and Rubbra PROGRAMME of works for unaccompanied voices by Sir Arnold Bax and Edmund Rubbra was recently broadcast in the Third Programme by the BBC Singers and the BBC Chorus, and recordings of the recital will be heard from 3YA at 3.20 p.m. on Sunday, May 8. Bax took up choral writing on a large scale in 1921, and two interesting experiments from this period will be included in the programme. They are the motet Mater ora filium, written for a large unaccompanied double choir, and another unaccompanied motet This Worldes Joie. Both of these works cultivate a kind of neo-archaic, elaborately and individually contrapuntal style that suits the carefully chosen old English words extremely well. Four madrigals by Rubbra are also included. Bold Decision QNE of the more tangible results of work done at the Cambridge Summer School organised by the Auckland Adult Education Centre earlier this year has been the bold decision to present a programme of three one-act operas to audiences in many North Auckland and Waikato towns during the coming school holidays. On a tour planned by the Centre’s Community Art Service the Cambridge Opera Group, with a chorus from Ardmore Training College, will present Riders to the Sea, by Vaughan Williams (based on the play by J. M. Synge), a Mozart pastoral, Bastien and Bastienne, and a comic opera for two voice’, The Telephone, by a contemporary American writer, Gian-Carlo Menotti. Listeners may hear Riders to the Sea in a studio presentation from 1YA

at 8.0 p.m. on Saturday, May 14. The soloists will be Bertha Rawlinson, Gabrielle Phillips, Eva Carr and Ramsay Howie, with Owen Jensen and. Layton Ring, pianists, Why Indeed? "YOUR Job-Work or Pleasure?" is _ ‘@ new series ‘of three talks and a discussion which will begin from 2YA on Thursday, May 12, at 7.15. Professor Ernest Beaglehole will set the belt moving by asking listeners "Why Work?" and proceeding to explain his reasons for expecting them to-do so. Beginning

with some consideration of a primitive community and its incentives to work Professor Beéaglehole will go on to explain how some solution of the industrial problems afflicting a modern society can be worked out by giving more responsibility to the workers, and more opportunity to participate in creating the basic conditions of their work. This goes some of the way to compensating the modern industrial worker for the lack of a sense of "belonging," so much a part of life and work in a more primitive society. Before and after Professor Beaglehole’s talk we shall doubtless continue to work for the usual incentivemoney, but his talk should help us to do the necessary with a little more satisfaction on the side. Relatively Speaking... ROFESSOR WAINWRIGHT, _ the central figure of A Moment of Inertia had gone one better than Einstein and relativity. '-He had found a way to cross the borders of time, so that when he consigned his wife to the middle of next week because the breakfast eggs were hard-boiled -into the middle of next week she went, Naturally this was all very puzzling to the policé and highly annoying for the professor. What the outcome of it all was listeners can hear in Maurice Horspool’s amusing play, which was recorded by the BBC Transcription Service from the original broadcast in Britain. A Moment of Inertia will be heard from 3YA at 9.30 p,m. on Tuesday, May 10. Tudor Music ON Thursday, May 12, at 7.30 from 2YA the Wellington Madrigal Group, under the direction of W. Roy Hill, will present the second of its-fortnightly recitals of Tudor Music. As recently as 50 years ago little was known of the vocal music of England’s "Golden Age," but since then the researches of enthusiasts such as Dr. E@mund Fellowes have brought to light many delightful Madrigals and Ayres. The programme on Thursday will include, in addition to

examples of Elizabethan church music, the relatively popular April in My. Mistress's Face by Thomas Morley, and Campion’s Never Weather-Beaten Sail. Alternating with Tudor Music on Thursday evenings listeners may hear the new series of recitals by Zillah and Ronald Castle, "The Golden Age of Music" which will acquaint listeners with rarelyheard instrumental music from the 12th to the 18th Centuries, played on instruments of the period. No Superstition in Alexandra [RE LISTENER sets little store by superstition. Its staff walk cheerfully under ladders if they happen to overhang the line of duty, and Friday, the Thirteenth; doesn’t mean a thing. Apparently the small Otago borough of Alexandra is similarly unaffected by omens and portents, for on Friday, May 13, it will come into the radio_news via 4YA, at 9.30 p.m., when it will be discussed by G. R. Campbell (orchardist and borough councillor), W. Hewitt (business man and deputy-mayor), D. R. Blyth (Headmaster of Alexandra School), and Mrs. G. Fenwick (housewife and. orchardist). The quartet will ‘consider two questions: (a) How do the young people of Alexandra, and the children, spend their leisure? and (b) Is Alexandra going ahead? Why? A 1948 index of New Zealand says that Alexandra has a population of 1,120, and concerns itself mostly with farming and fruit-growing; and then there is golddredging in the Molyneaux River. For relaxation Nature provides shooting and fishing. Apparently Alexandrians are law-abiding folk for Magistrate’s Court sittings are held only once monthly. But listeners to 4YA on Friday, the Thirteenth of May, can look forward to hearing something more personal than the directory gives about the town that in 1864 was named after Queen Alexandra, then Princess of Wales.