THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 555, 10 February 1950, Page 26

THINGS TO COME

HEN he was last in New Zealand three or four years ago Leo Cherniavsky formed a very high opinion of the children, for whom he played at a number of special matinees. That is why he plans to meet as many audiences of young people as he can during his present tour, which will begin in Auckland on February 14. "New Zealand children were wonderfully quiet and attentive," he says. "Indeed, children often make better "listeners than adults, for they go purely to enjoy themSelves, while their elders’ motives are ‘much more varied and seldom as good." Cherniavsky began his concert career 52 years ago in Russia, when, as a lad of seven, he gave a recital in his native Odessa. All he remembers now of that event was that it was a stiflingly hot day. "I was ‘wearing exceedingly long hair, and so that I should be able to play in greater comfort my father had it cut off. My mother was furious." Since that ‘time he has played in almost every corner of the world, from Australia and New Zealand to the Belgian Congo. His home is in Sydney, and, he says, "Now I am semi-retired. I play only when I feel like it.. But sometimes I get rest-less-a little bored. Then perhaps I will go on tour." He returned only a few months ago from a year’s tour of Burope, where he found that whatever injuries the war and its aftermath have inflicted they have not been able to harm the people’s love for good music. A studio recital by Leo Cherniavsky was scheduled to be broadcast from 1YC on -Thursday, February 9. He will be heard from 1YA this Sunday, February 12, at 8.18 p.m., and will give further studio broadcasts as follows: 2YA, March 19 ‘and 24; 4YA, March 27 and 30; 3YA, March 31 and April 2. Women’s Sessions from 4YA OMEN’S séssions from 4YA have been reorganised for 1950, so as to bring them into line with those at other centres. The task of reorganisation has been in the hands of Barbara Basham, who has arranged for much new and varied fare. The sessions will now be heardyat 11,0 a.m, (beginning on February 14) from Monday to Friday each week, and in addition to Mavis McAra’s Countrywomen’s Magazine (which will be heard on Mondays, starting on March 6) listeners will be able to meet city visitors on the air, hear controversial opinions on school and home matters, and enjoy travel talks and other matters of general interest. The first week’s programmes will include a talk, Getting Married, sent by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the first of a series called Design and Illustration, by Joan Dukes, a former English art and sewing teacher, who is now married to a New Zealander. In the same week Hilda Yen Male (the wife of a New Zealander serving in the Human Rights Division of the United Nations Secretariat) will give the first of four talks on One World or None. : London and Life | ; | ONDON -and particularly Fleet Street-as seen through the eyes of one of the greatest newspapermen of the last fifty years, is the picture painted for : listeners in the BBC progranime "James

Bone’s London," which will be heard from 4YA next week. James Bone, youngest brother of Muirhead Bone, the artist, made his first visit to London half a century ago when he was a young Glasgow shipping clerk. His brother took him to lunch at the celebrated "Cheshire Cheese" tavern in Fleet Street, and there he saw lunching together Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, Mr. and Mrs. Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Haldane and Mr. Augustine Birrell. That incident settled young Bone’s path in life. "A journalist," he wrote years afterwards,

"is not only. one who looks for news, but to whom news and events come. Fate had stage-managed it all. That was an historic luncheon upon which I had stumbled on my first. day in London. The news had come

to me, so I came to the news, to Fleet Street, where I stayed for fifty years." Bone wrote two books on his London "experiences, The London Perambulator, published just after the first world war, and London Echoing, published when he retired, and it is on these books that the programme is based. James Bone’s London will be broadcast from 4YA at 9.30 p.m. on Monday, February 13. Australian Cricketers HE Australian cricket team (not the one that is playing in South Africa) arrives in New Zealand on February 13. Before the team teft Australia, 2UE’s sports editor, Cliff Cary, talked

about the players we shall soon be seeing in action, about their strengths and possible weaknesses, about their past performances and future prospects. The ZBs have a record of this talk and will broadcast it on a national link

at 6.0 p.m. on February 13. On match days during the tour, the ZBgs will link for progress results at 1.0 p.m., 3.45‘ and 6.0. A Tisket \V HEN Ella Fitzgerald was first heard from, about the mid-thirties, she had a smooth voice, but was as gauche as a left-handed man drinking soup at a crowded table. She sang at the Savoy in Harlem with the late Chick Webb’s band, and the customers there, sharp enough dressers themselves, forgave her rural taste in clothes when they heard her sing. She hit the big time with her record of A Tisket, a Tasket, 1] Lost My Yellow Basket, a song anybody could have sung, and sold. After two years incessant A Tisketing she was more tired of the song than Rachmaninoff of his regrettably persistent Prelude in C Sharp Minor, Commercial success inspired Ella to shine herself up a little, but it went no further to her head than a new hair-do. She still sang simply,-

without that reliance on commercially successful tricks of style which has ruined many promising jazz singers. When Chick Webb died, Ella made bread and butter recordings with many different bands and combinations, ‘but she still loved to sit in with a group of the boys playing for fun, and take her solos as they came, improvising on the theme with her voice used like any other wind instrument; mo words, but a good pure tone and a fresh flow of melodic ideas. Station 3YC is featuring this musicians’ singer in the Tea Dance, at 6.0 p.m. on Monday, February 13, when she supplies the interludes to dance music played by Artie Shaw’s orchestra. Edwardian Opera \V HEN Fielding’s 18th Century novel, Tom Jones, was turned into a light opera, with music by Edward German, it was received by Edwardian theatregoers with enthusiasm. Though it is very rarely heard on the professional stage nowadays, amateur societies here and there have it in their libraries, and German’s charming score is firmly established in repertoires of light music. Recently the BBC's Midland Home Service produced a programme of excerpts from Tom Jones with a linking narration. The principal singers are Joan Butler, Frederick Harvey, Edith Lewin, Kathleen Coxon and Dudley Rolph. The BBC Midland Light Orchestra and Chorus are conducted by Gilbert Vinter, Philip Cunningham tells the story, and the producer is John Tylee. These Tom Jones excerpts, occupying just on an hour, will be broadcast by 1YA at 7.57 p.m. on Saturday, February 18. N.Z. Soft Series E seem to be widening our sporting jinterests. Last year, for the first time in our history, there was a broadcast commentary on the North v. South Island Softball match. This year, the precedent established, there will be another broadcast when the game is played in Christchurch on February 18. Sooner or later, if we go on like this, there will be a clash with America, where a knowledge of baseball is as i portant to a Presidential candidate as being born in a log cabin. But in America, they play with a hard ball. What will oécur? As the. New Zealand Soft Ball League gradually expands until it takes in the whole South-West Pacific area, there will be mutterings from Yankee Stadium, where tradition is as carefully cherished as it is at Lord’s. Unless a compromise is reached over the hardness of the ball, and possibly on other minor matters such as the number of umpires it, is allowable to moider in one game, the controversy may well grow as bitter’ as the Bodyline Battle. Meanwhile, we can listen closely to the 3YA commentary \at 3.0 p.m. on Saturday, February 18, and see whether New Zealand Softball has yet developed famous, euphonious names like those that float over the shortwaves from America during the World Series; names like Cookie Lava~getto and Ed Stanky. A.