FIRST OF THE SEASON

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 555, 10 February 1950, Page 17

FIRST OF THE SEASON

HE NZBS Concert Section building contains a studio where the National Orchestra rehearses, and the studio windows overlook Customhouse Quay. In. summer, when at least some of the windows are apt to be open, the brass doesn’t have to blow up to fortissimo for the music to be heard on the street, and so Wellington people who often pass the corner of Customhouse Quay and Waring Taylor Street know how busily the National Orchestra has been rehearsing since the members-re-assembled early in Januaty. Dr. Edgar Bainton, who agréed to take over the conductorship temporarily until a permanent appointment was made, has’ kept the OrcheStra | hard at it from the time he arrived in this country on January 12. "2 Although the concert season proper does not begin until March, radio listeners will have an earlier chance of hear-

ing the Orchestra when it makes two broadcasts from 2YA on February 14 and 21 from St. Paul{s Schoolroom, _ Wellington. The works broadcast on February 14 will be Beethoven’s Overture to Coriolanus, Haydn’s Symphony in G@ (The Oxford), which has, not been played before by the Orchestra, Elgar’s Serenade for Strings (Opus 20), and Smétana’s Overture to The Bartered Bride. The second broadcast also contains |, a piece which has not before been played by the Orchestra: Sir Thomas Beecham’s "arrangement of Handel’s "Suite "Amaryillis.. "The other works in this broadcast are the Prelude to Act I. of |. Lohengtin (Wagner), Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C Major, and the Slavonic Dance No. 1 by Dvorak.