Music When Soft Voices Die..

New Zealand Listener, Volume 24, Issue 621, 25 May 1951, Page 10

Music When Soft Voices Die..

N Saturday evening 3YC regaled us with Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro; on Sunday the same session was played from 3YA. Looking at life steadily and looking at it whole it is mo wonder if some Christchurch listeners can’t help singing that line about wanting only "you and MUSIC, MUSIC, MUSIC." Where are book reviews in the evenings, or is it thought that ZB’s racy sketches are sufficient? In the matter of poetry should readings from our own poets orieinate only in other studios:

and whyy when splendid readings were given on the last evening of the Writers’ Conference by Messrs. Baxter, Dowling, Smithyman and others were these not recorded? Apart from Mr. Baxter’s brilliant survey of New Zealand poetry which the confer-

ence asked the Broadcasting authorities to save complete, we have heard only unannounced snippets from talks by Vance Palmer and Blackwood Paul. Is this to be all? If too discursive, the scripts might have been tackled in the same manner as the Church Congress addresses which were abridged and recorded separately for the general public last May. The power of the radio to stimulate thought, communicate ideas, give a worthwhile critical opinion, or open up a path into indigenous culture is immense and I feel that through lack either of enthusiasm or equipment it is not being fully explored at present in Canterbury. Perhaps there is a certain timidity; a fear that the final product will not be Quite BBC. If so a more positive, expansive attitude is necessary, one that can take criticism in its stride. All calves totter at birth, no matter how

they may gallop later.

Westcliff