THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 544, 25 November 1949, Page 25

THINGS TO COME

-OPERATION is a tradition among New Zealand dairy farmers. When they took up land they needed factories to make their butter and cheese, so they clubbed together and put up some of the capital, borrowing the rest from the banks by joint and several guarantee. They built their factories all over the North Island where the rainfall! was sufficient for dairying. In Northland many were established about the turn of the century. Now all Northland’s dairy factories are co-op., and if the Hokianga One is a fair example, they haven’t done so badly. In 27 years there, the number , of suppliers has about doubled, while the quantity of butter produced has increased nearly fivefold. You can hear more about the Hokianga Dairy Company in 1YA’s Country Journal at 12.35 p.m. on Tuesday, November 29. Reading is Fun EARNING one’s ABC is practically a thing of the past, for the modern infant learns to read mainly through pictures which tell him what words mean. By the latest methods reading for children is, or should be, fun, and in a series of four talks about the subject A. B. Allen of Christchurch explains just why this is so. The talks are to be broadcast in 3YA’s Mainly for Women session, starting at 10.0 a.m. on Tuesday, November 29. The first two talks, "Let’s Read," and "Letters, Sounds and Words," are concerned with the different methods of teaching children to read, and the second two, "Children Who Can’t Read" and "Reading is Fun," discuss children who have difficulty in reading, not because of dullness, but because they have some specific disability that has not been recognised. —

Bang Goes a Trait Bit OR those who don’t know (Tibetans, Red Indians and Sassenachs) Wednesday, November 30, is St. Andrew’s Day, an occasion when places like Dunedin come out in a rash of tartans, while the air is sucked out of the low lying parts of the town to fill the bag-pipes. At 7.30 on this evening 4YC is spending half-an-hour humorously debunking traits attributed to Scotland. This programme opens up a fascinating field of possibilities. Some Scots are proud of their traits, and will not be amused at heating them debunked, some (on account of a well-known trait) will not be amused either. Some will hear the programme, make notes, puzzle for a couple of weeks, and then laugh, and there may even be some whd will listen absorbedly to what appears to them a factual account of their national customs. The programme organisers might have been wiser to give their feature an "S" certificate, and marked it for Sassenachs Only. Blue Smoke

T intervals during the year the Christchurch Liedertafel holds concerts for its subscribers and their friends who, while listening to a programme of well sung choral and solo items, put up a dense smoke-screen from pipes, cigars and cigarettes. It’s all pleasantly informal and as friendly an affair as a Saturday afternoon roll-up on a suburban bowling green. Once -a year the choir dons its best bib and tucker and presents a solid front of stiff shirts in the

clearer and more formal atmosphere of "Ladies’ Night." The Liedertafel (conductor Victor C. Peters) is now 65 years old and the senior male choir in Canterbury. During those years it has done much to encourage the art of part-sing-ing, both accompanied and unaccompanied. The choir will be heard from 3YA on Friday, December 2, at 8.10 p.m., in works by Hatton, Mendelssohn, Dunhill and Alec Rowley. Dante N a series of six programmes starting on Friday, December 2, listeners to 3YA will hear something about the works of Dante, one of the world’s master spirits, and the national poet of Italy. The first broadcast, at 7.15 p.m,

will be a talk giving a short account of his life and times and achievements, intended as an introduction to the other five programmes. At 8.41 p.m., the same day listeners will be introduced to the Vita Nuova, which contains the history of Dante’s, love for Beatrice and describes how he feigned a false love to hide a true love, how he fell ill and saw in a dream the death and transfiguration of his beloved, how she died, how the compassion of another woman nearly. won his heart from its first affection, and how at last he saw a vision which in duced him to devote himself to study that. he might be more fit to "glorify Beatrice. On successive Fridays at 8.40 p.m. listeners will be able to follow the cycle of sin, reparation, redemption and beatitude, as described in The Divine Comedy. The poet’s journey into Hell, through Inferno and Purgatory to Patedise will be divided into four programmes in which the chief aim will be to give listeners an idea of the nature and scope of. Dante’s ‘famous work through readings linked by a commmentary. The scripts were written by Emily Baizeen, of Christchurch, and as far as

is known the subject is one that has not previously been featured in NZBS programmes. Dickens Characters from 1XN -L-E-A-N, clean, verb active, to make bright, to scour. W-I-N, win, D-E-R, der, winder, a casement. When a boy knows this out of the book, he goes and does it." Dickens lovers will recognise that as one of the more inspired pro- | nouncements on child education by. Mr. Wackford Squeers, of Dotheboys Hall, | Yorkshire. | Squeers, the schoolmaster | who provides much of the humour and villainy in Nicholas Nickleby, is the first in the popular BBC series Dicker® Characters, and Whangarei listeners will be able to hear him brought to life at the microphone ‘next Sunday, December 4, at 8.15 p.m. He is played by Frank L. Atkinson, and Mrs. Squeers is played by Gladys Young. Other Dickens characters iri the series, to be heard from 1XN at the same time on succeeding Sundays, are Mr. Pecksniff (that bland, self-righteous, sanctimonious, whitefaced, fish-handed,. sycophantic humbug, as one critic has described him), Tony Weller, Sampson Brass. and Daniel Quilp, Sydney Carton, and Mrs. Gamp. The Yukon Trail OURDOUGHS who followed the Yukon trail in the gold rush of 1898 celebrated their 50th anniversary last year, so Michael Barkway, the BBC's representative in Canada, decided to trek over the famous gold trail on his own account to see what vestiges he could discover: of the old mining days.

The fesult, was a nuggety half-hour programme called The Yukon Trail. Barkway didn’t have to travel by dog‘sledge, but went by train, automobile, and aeroplane to various parts of the Yukon, accompanied by his récording gear. He found that

there were still old-timers willing to tell their tales of hard slogging in the diggings and hard play 4n Dawson City, and he recorded their voices for use in his programme. The Yukon Trail was produced in Toronto, and will be broadcast from 1YA at 2.0 p.m: on-Sunday, December, 4. ‘Cello Concerto ALTHOUGH he was a prolific writer of instrumental music, particularly chamber music, few of the works of Luigi Boccherini are regularly performed today. Among these, yet rarely heard in New Zealand, is perhap$ his’ most delightful composition, the. Concerto for. Violoncello and String Orchestra. Boecherini was himself a fine ‘céllist and this work, his only ‘cello concerto, al--lows the soloist to be heard to the best possible advantage. It is in three contrasting movements-Allegro mdderato, | Adagio non troppo, and Rondo allegro -and it has been described as exceed--ingly charming and full of lovely tunes. : Listeners to 1YA on Saturday, December 3, will hear it during a studio recital beginning at 8.21 p.m., presented by the Auckland . String Players, with Peers Coetmore as soloist, conducted by Georg Tintner. The recital will open with three sonatas by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, third son of Johann Sebastian Bach. This music is characteristic of the style the composer helped to originate and is very different from that of his illustrious father.