THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 24, Issue 622, 1 June 1951, Page 26

THINGS TO COME

HE announcement some time ago that the Persian Parliament had demanded nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company must have sét many people wondering about the background to Britain’s interest in Persian oil. The British Government holds a majority of the shares in the AngloIranian Oil Company. It has stated that it cannot remain indifferent to the affairs of the company and that it has been advised that under the terms of the agreement between the company and the Persian Government (valid until 1993) the company’s operations cannot legally be terminated by unilateral action of the Persian Government. On April 17 the BBC broadcast a "report to the people" on the background to the present situation in the Persian oilfields. In tracing the history of the oilfields, stating the facts in the present controversy and relating them to Britain’s security it had the help of Mr. Hamzavi, Press Counsellor at the Iranian Embassy in London, and other experts on Persian affairs, including David Mitchell, Christopher Sykes, R. C. Zachner, Edward Hodgkin, E. Lawson Lomax and Dr. A. K. S. Lambton, all of whom spoke in the ‘programme. Recordings of this report have already been heard by listeners in the Wellington and Auckland districts. Canterbury listeners will hear the programme during the coming week (June 2 to 5), but details had not been announced when we went to press; and it will be heard from 4YC at 9.15 p.m. on Sunday, June 10. For the Blind a face and July are the last two months of the national appeal for £300,000 to be used for the training and personal welfare of the blind. Conducted by the New Zealand Institute for the Blind, it began in the northern part of the North Island in February, and in the final two months it will cover most. of the South Island. The appeal will open officially in Christchurch this Saturday, June 2, and in Dunedin on Thursday, June 14. There will be a delayed broadcast of the Christchurch opening by 3ZB at 9.0 p.m. on June 2, and by 3YA at 730 p.m. on Monday, June 4. The opening in Dunedin will be broadcast by 4YA at 8.30 p.m. on June 14. A’ tecording will be played from 4ZB later, probably the following night? The Story of the Blind Institute, an NZBS programme on the Auckland Blind Institute, its people and their training, work and recreation, will be broadcast by 3ZB at 7.0 p.m. on Sunday, June 10, and later from other South Island ZB, YA, YZ and X Stations. Thistles in the Rye NN you plant that row of par-+ snips and they don’t all come up you-are annoyed, but not nearly as pained as the farmer who lays down a ten-acre paddock in rye-grass and finds he has grown a fine crop of thistles. The purity of the seed he uses jis of deep concern to every back-yard gardener and grazier, and if he buys certified seed it is almost certain to have been checked for purity at the Government seed-test-ing station at Palmerston North. Seeds by the Million is the title of an NZBS documentary programme describing

what goés on in a building in the centre of Palmerston where £50,000 worth of seed tested every month makes possible a seed industry with a turnover of six million pounds sterling a year, and an export trade of three miljions. Seeds are tested not only for purity but also for germination and strain, and the pro-

gramme describes in the words of the scientists and laboratory workers themselves the scope and difficulties of this important work. Among the speakers are J. H. Claridge, Superintendent of the New Zealand Seed Industry, and A, V. Lithgow, who is in charge of the testing station. Seeds by the Million will be broadcast by 2ZA at .2.0 p.m. on Sunday, June 10, Gods on Earth N hour of excerpts from the new British opera, The Olympians, by Arthur Bliss and J. B. Priestley, will be broadcast by 3YC at 8.30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 5. It was recorded by the BBC in the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, by artists from the original production and the Covent Garden Orchestra conducted by Karl.Rankl. The classicak gods, Jupiter, Diana, Mars, Bacchus, Mercury and Venus wander on earth disguised ag_ strolling players, They are rewarded once in a long time on Midsummer Night by regaining for a space their ancient divine powers. It is on the eve of such a night that the opera opens, and one sees the -effect their recovered powers have on some human beings in a_ small Provencal town. Priestley has staged his plot on the shores of the Mediterranean, where the gods would probably have felt most at home, and in the days -of Louis Philippe. As an opening to the programme listeners will hear an introduction by Priestley himself who, four or five years ago, gave Bliss the idea for the opera, ; The Music Is Personal ESAR FRANCK lived the life of a saint, but a cheerful saint, as a friend recalls of him, "always crackling with wit and repartee." He rose early, lived simply and set aside a _ period every day for quiet meditation. His music is very personal in idiom, certain turns of melodic and harmonic expres-. sion indelibly stamping it as his. It is romantic in feeling, with a peculiar sort of mystical exaltation. Franck and his younger contemporary Debussy stand as leaders in two very different schools in the 19th Century French musical art the school of heavy romanticism and the school of light-hearted impressionism,

Yet Debussy, in his capacity of newspaper critic, felt able to write of Franck as "one of the greatest" of the great musicians. Station 3YA’s Classical Hour on Thursday, June 7, will be given up to recordings of some of César Franck’s works. For Maori Farmers BEGINNING on June 7, the session for Bay of Plenty farsnere which 1YZ is now broadcasting at 7.15 p.m. on the first and third Thursday of each month, will include a section for Maori listeners. This will consist of a summary in Maori of news from Matakana Island, off Tauranga, and may eventually be increased in scope ta cover Maori farming throughout the Bay of Plenty. On Matakana a transformation is in progress under the guidance of the Department of Agriculture, and the Maori settlers are obtaining good results from intensive grassland dairying. C. Nicholls (headmaster of the Matakana Island School), who paved the way for the formation of the island’s Young Farmers’ Club, will supply the Matakana news, which will be recorded in Aucke land. Ursula Bethell’s Poetry RSULA BETHELL’S * poetry is among the most clearly original and delicately sensitive that has been written in New Zealand. Born in England in 1874, Ursula Bethell spent part of her early life in an English Cathedral town and gave many years to church and welfare work, especially among ‘young people in London. Much of her work was written in-a cottage on Cashmere Hills, Christchurch, where she lived from 1924 to 1934. Her garden looked out over the Canterbury Plains to the ‘Southern Alps, and her poems reflect her thoughts and feelings about the garden and the Canterbury landscape. Written at first without thought. of publication, they were circulated in manuscript among ‘friends; but their quality was soon recognised and the first of the three volumes of poems published in her lifetime appeared in 1929. An appreciation of Ursula Bethell by Helen Shaw will be heard from 1YC at 9.38 p.m. on Friday, June 8. Couperin-le- Grand ERE are five generations of musicians in the notable Couperin family. They all practised in Paris; the earliest was born about 1626 and the latest died about 1850. At least nine of them were at different times organists of the Church of St. Gervais. The one whose music is often heard today is Francois, afd to distinguish him from his relations he is called Couperin-le-Grand. His special fame rests on his wellshaped, delicate and ingenious harpsichord music; most of hig pieces are miniatures and many of them bear fanciful titles, picturing states of feeling. Eight of Couperin’s short works, played by Wanda Landowska (who is credited with the restoration of the harpsichord) will be heard from 3YC at 8.55 p.m, on Friday, June 8.