THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 547, 16 December 1949, Page 26

THINGS TO COME

climate, some say that it is too many suet puddings, and some that it is too many inhibitions, but whatever it is Britain has produced few jazzmen who have been recognised as such in Basin Street, New Orleans, in the vicinity of the Chicago Loop, or in the jump joints on New York’s 52nd Street. British bands are apt to play pleasant dance music; smooth, unobtrusive, and slightly mechanical, but good jazz is neither unobtrusive or mechanical. George Shearing is one of the few Britons who is not written off in America as a stone cold Limey and a square of the worst description, This blind pienist, whose ability in fluent improvisation has been compared to Art Tatum’s (high praise in Harlem) can be heard playing interludes in a halfhour programme of dance music from 3YC at 6.0 p.m. on Monday, December 19, S OME theorists say it is the Journey Round His Skull HE room spins, the voices of surgeons and nurses recede and blur as unconsciousness comes up like a_ blanket pulled over his head. Philip Duddridge (played by Donald Gray) is about to undergo a brain operation, in the BBC play Journey into Darkness. Using the cinema method of flashbacks, Martyn C. Webster presents events in Philip’s life, leading to a tragedy that brings him to the operating theatre. Here, under the anaesthetic, Philip relives the past. Beryl! Calder plays the part of Philip’s wife while other members of the cast are Martin Lewis, Susan Richards, Stanley Groome, Neil Tuson, and Dorothy Summers, whom listeners will remember as the inimitable Mrs. Mopp of Itma. Journey into Darkness was written by Margaret Potter and Trevor Hill and will be broadcast at 8.27 p.m. on Tuesday, December 20, from 3YA. Classical and Romantic PEOPLE who like division divide the music world into two; the hep and the long hair. Some dividers, still unsatisfied, split the long hairs down the centre into classical and romantic. Both these last categories are well served by 4YC during the week December 19 to December 25. Monday is a night off to

go to the pictures, but on Tuesday, December 20, the romantic can lose himself at 9.30 p.m, in Dvorak’s Trio in E Minor, while the more austere listener has a _ choice, between 8.0 and 9.0 p.m. of Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms’ chamber music. On Wednesday, between

8.9 and 8.45, the classically minded can hear the Beethoven Concerto No, 4 in G Major, and Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze, played by the Sadier’s Wells Orchestra. From 8.45 the romantics can bathe in Tchaikovski’s Fifth Symphony. Thursday is a classical night off, but the romantics have (after 10.0 p.m.) Chopin, Schumann, and the Bach-

Gounod Ave Maria. On Friday at 8.39 Stravinsky conducts the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra in his own Symphony in Three Movements; certainly austere, possibly classical. From 8.0 to 8.39 there are orchestral pieces by Ravel and Bax for the romantics, On Saturday a half-hour between 9.0 and 9.30 of Beethoven and Brahms on the one hand, and Wagner on the other, while on Christmas Day both sections can unite and rejoice together with the Canterbury Choir of America. Pirates’ Creek AT 5.0 p.m. on Tuesday, December 20, 4YZ starts a new children’s feature, Pirates’ Creek, a BBC adventure serial. The ‘leading figures are two English boys, a French girl and a Chinese boy who live on Karania, an island in the Mediterranean. In the very first episode

we find the complications setting in, just as they ought to. The friendly attitude shown the children by the island’s inhabitants suddenly changes; strange things occur in an old wreck in the Pirates’ Creek,

and before long the children find themselyes marooned on board it. There are six episodes packed with adventure before the mystery is finally solved. Borodin Quartet : ROM bitter experience most Ifsteners will feel an instant sympathy for Alexander Borodin in his complaint that his music was largely written "in the little leisure given me by a bad cold in the head." At the same time Borodin led an exceedingly busy professional life .in St. Petersburg. He was a doctor of medicine and a professor of chemistry, and he founded a school of medicine for women. It is therefore not surprising that the complete list of his works is a small one, but his influence, particularly on chamber music, has been considerable, His two string quartets were both written in a style diverging completely from the traditions of his day and are said to have been the source of inspiration for works by Debussy and Ravel.

Listeners may hear the Borodin Quartet No. 2 in D from. 1YA at 7.30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 21, when it will be presented by a string quartet organised by Ina Bosworth (violin), who is also leader of the Auckland String Players. The other members are Moira

Fenton (violin), Victor Mandel (viola), and June Taylor (’cello). Find the Nylon N Wolf Harding’s half-hour play Two’s a Pair, the listener is presented with the odd situation of a young woman found strangled with one of her own nylons. Suspicion falls heavily .on her

former boy friend, and the young man’s acquittal depends on the finding of a second stocking-and a second man. The play was originally produced by David H. Godfrey in the BBC Light Programme, with Hugh Burden and Richard Williams in the leading parts. This is not the first time Burden and Godfrey have worked together; some listeners will remember Godfrey’s production of the Dorothy L, Sayers’s play Whose Body? (in which Hugh .Burden played Lord Peter Wimsey) which was broadcast from 3YA in November last year. Richard Williams. started his stage career in musical comedy, one of his first jobs being that of understudy to Jack Hulbert. Two's a Pair will be heard from 4YZ at 9.30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 21. Clarinet Quintet ‘THE clarinet is made to utter some odd sounds these days, but it’s true nature is warm-hearted and romantic, and Arthur Bliss’s Clarinet Quintet is in the best tradition of music for this instrument. As Mozart had his Stadler and Brahms his Muhlfeld to compose for, so Bliss has his Frederick Thurston, for whom this work was specially written, and in the opinion of at least one critic it is in direct succession in quality to the two works by Mozart and. Brahms. After a few opening bars in the nature of a short meditation the main melody is introduced, a gracefully lyrical tune without any of the _ wide angular leaps that characterise so much modern melody. The work as a whole is full of vitality and this is especially noticeable in the first and last movements. The slow movement contains much rich mellow sound, Arthur Bliss’s Clarinet Quintet, ‘played by Frederick Thurston and the Griller Quartet, will be broadcast from 2YA at 7.45 p.m. on Thursday, December 22, Not Easy, But.... EW ZEALAND pianists don’t often venture so far from the shore of cone vention that they come upon an island named Bartok; strange, dissonant territory this, but Lili Kraus made the journey in her New Zealand concerts and perhaps emboldened our own pianists. Bartok is not for everybody yet. He may be in twenty years, or he may be forgotten. His reputation has risen steadily since his death in America in 1945, and now stands higher than ever it did. Meantime, while we catch up slowly, all we can do is have his music played as often as possible, and listen to it with hopeful, open ears. One opportunity for this comes from 3YA at’ 7.46 p.m, oh Friday, Deceniber 23, when Gwyneth Brown plays "Six Dandes: in Bulgarian Rhythm," "Three Hungarian Songs," and "Preludio all 'Ungherese." When Irish Ears are Listening | F the number of films and the Soaring sales of recordings in which Bing sings with a brogue are any indication, the songs of Irefand twang the heartstrings of some millions. Listeners’ favourites like "Molly Brannigan," "Kitty of Coleraine" and "Down by the Sally Gardens" can be heard at 9.30 p.m. on Friday, December 23, when a con‘cert of well-known Irish melodies will be broadcast from 3YA. Henrietta Byrne and George Beggs are the soloists, accompanied by Havelock Nelson, with the Ormiston Choir, conducted by William Boyd. ‘This. programme of Irish songs was originally broadcast in the Home Service of the BBC.