Old Songs Re-sung

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 521, 17 June 1949, Page 10

Old Songs Re-sung

LTHOUGH The Story of Words and Music is a familiar title, the programme I heard from 2YA last Wednesday was a brand new presentation of old, old favourites sung from the

— studio by a group of well-trained voices under the direction of Audrey GibsonFoster and introduced by Cedric Gardi; ner, This, I felt, was exactly what the Average Listener pays his 25/- for. The signature tune was "Drink to Me Only." Then-the choir swelled into Maxwelton Braes Are Bonny fading after the first verse to enable Mr. Gardiner to tell us how Annie’s parents, learning of her love for the author, shut her up in her room till she agreed to wed the more eligible man of their choice, whereupon the author, instead of laying him down arid deeing, showed his mettle by similarly marrying another. Then the choir took up the song again with undiminished sweetness, leaving the audience, if so minded, to admix their own irony. Then came John Peel, admirably rendered except perhaps for the somewhat premature hush before "death" in the first verse, which I have always taken to refer only to the fox, and made memorable by cascades of descant in the second. The song that allowed most scope for Mr. Gardiner’s dramatic gift was undoubtedly Auld Robin Gray, though the choir enjoyed itself all the way from The Last Rose of Summer to Down Among the Dead Men. And so, I’m sure, did the audience,