THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 633, 17 August 1951, Page 26

THINGS TO COME

NTHUSIASM among Christchurch jazz fans ran high for the first concert of the local Jazz Society held a few weeks ago. Bands big and small, music written and improvised, were héard, and the big audience shrieked its delight, shouted, stamped, clapped, yelled and whistled for more. So that enthusiasts elsewhere may hear what Christchurch talent can do and those who at~ tended may recapture some of the glow of the occasion, a half-hour programme of the best of the concert has been recorded. This features the big bands of Doug Kelly in Elevation, Martin Winiata in Leave Some, and Brian Marston in Yesterdays. Smaller groups héard are Bob Bradford’s Quartet, Tommy Kahi’s Group, Gerald. Marston’s Quintet and Doug Caldweil’s Trio. This programme of Christchurch jazz will be heard from 2YA at 10.0 p.m. on Monday, August 20, from 3YA on Tuesday, September 4, and later from 1YA and 4YA. Provincial Parade ISTENERS to the half-hour review which 3YA has broadcast on Tuesdays for the last year may be 7 £8 to know that although the Centénnial Celebrations are over, this programme (retaining something of its original shape) as Canterbury Roundabout, will continue to present the province to the province. Week by week as distinguished visitors come and go, schools celebrate their jubilees, choirs sing, bands play and crowds gather fof this event or that, Canterbury Roundabout will record the passing parade. The programme on Tuesday, August 21, at 8.30 p.m. will introduce sdtne of the officers and crew met by Peter Hunter of 3YA who rfecently took a tape fecorder aboard an inter-island ferry steamer to find out what goes on behind the scenes-on the bridge, in the wiréless room and in the engine room. This new series of reviews will tell listeners about the work of public utilities in the province-Hospi-tals, Gas, Electricity, and Transport Departments, the Milk Treatment Station and Catchment and Drainage Boards, whose services the community too often takes for granted. For instance, one ratepayer was heard to say, "Anyone with a creek running through his property can’t hélp being interested in the Drainage Board. Ducks come up the creek, and mén in waders cut the banks back. There’s always something happening." Under the Weather "HIS is the Weather Office. The Situation: The anti-cyclone that has coveréd New Zealand for the last few days .has started to move to the north-east. Barometers are falling rapidly as a vigorous cold ftont approaches from the south-west. The front is associated with a very deep depression near Campbell Island, and is expected to sweep across the country during the next thirty-six hours. Here are the district forecasts up to midnight tomorrow . . ." We hear these wordsor sométhing like them-daily, but what, in down-to-earth terms, do they imply? Taxpayers don’t need a meteorologist to tell them what a deep depression is or when to expect it, but listeners generally may welcome a simple explanation of some of the other technical terms that come from the Weather Office. The story of how observations

are received from all over New Zealand, the Pacific Islands and Australia, how the forecasters determine whether its going to be fine or wet, hot or cold, calm or windy, and how the weather affects our daily lives, will be told in a

NZBS documentary programme, The Weather, by Stephen Soly. This programme will be heard from 3YA on Friday, August 24, at 8.15 p.m. and from 1YA on Sunday, August 26, at 4.0 p.m. Other YA and YZ stations and 1XN and 2XG will broadcast it later. Good Neighbours (,00D-TEMPERED sympathy with those whose history has made their national pride more touchy than ours is a pretty good background for internatiopal co-operation, in the view of Barbara Edwards, an English lecturer who is spending a year in New Zealand while her husband is acting Professor of Geography at Auckland University. International relations is a subject that frightens many, but in three talks recorded for the NZBS Mrs, Edwards brings it down to a very practical level when she talks about the way in which the foreigner has been brought much neater home in the last half-century. While in New Zéaland Mrs. Edwards is representing the International Federation of Business and Professioral Women’s Clubs on a goodwill tour. Her talks have already started from 1XH and 2ZA, which will broadcast the third in the Women’s Hour on Wednesday, August 22. They will start in the same session from 2ZB, 3ZB and 4ZB on Wednesday, August 29, and from 1ZB on September 19. : Schumann’s Songs ‘THE year 1840 was called by Schumann his "Song Yéar." In it the long opposition of Clara Wiéck’s father to her love for the young composer was finally ovetcome and they were married. This inspired Schumann to write a profusion of magnificent songs almost as amazing in their vatiety as the long series of piano works \that precede them. Fine examples of Schumann’s lyric genius include The Lotus Flower, The Walnut Tree, The Call of the Spirit and Humility. These, with Dedication and I Chide Thee Not, will be sung by Valerie Perry (soprano) in a Schumann studio recital from 3YC at 7.0 pm. on Thursday, August 23. As Valerie Peppler this soprano has for some years been a soloist in oratorio with the Christchurch Harmonic Society, and in the city’s Civic Music Council presentations. In 1947 she sang with Arthur Servent and Janet

Howe in Carmen, and two years ago toured NZBS stations. On Sunday, August 26, at 9.0 p.m., Valerie Perry will sing another group of songs from 3YC, this time by Hageman, Bantock and Bridge. No Obscure Poet HEN A. R. D. Fairburn’s long poem To a Friend in the Wilderness had its first publication in a reading from 1YC not long ago it was recognised as an important event. Taking the form of letters in verse, with two extracts from the letters to which they reply, this poem is sure to find appreciative listeners even among those who do not normally read or listen to verse. Here is no obscure poet. Mr. Fairburn writes, in language which creatés a rich and beautiful picture of life lived close to fature, of a conflict: Should one live safe in that natural wilderness where the "days are not mixed with violence, the years suffer a gentle death, die slowly, fall like leaves," and "morning brings the sunlight on the sill, the bellbird singing,’ or stay in "this wilderness that men have built"? Read by William Austin, To a Friend in: the Wilderness wil be heard from 2YC at 8.0 p.m. on Friday, August 24, Standord-bearer UGENE YSAYE was one’ of those many violinists who have come from the neighbourhood of Liége (Vieuxtemps, Martsick, Musin, César Thomson and a host of lesser men). He was called the standard-bearer of the romantics and was looked upon as a master in romantic music, but something of an intruder in the classics. Before the beauty and Spirit of his Bach and the glamour of his Beéthoven could win their victory over tradition ghe had to wait for a gradually changing world, a world that in the end honoured the classics more highly for yielding to human expression than a previous generation had honoured them for denying it. With the excuse, as the Musical News put it, that a touch of scandal may offer welcome relief to readers about music and musicians, it may be irrelevantly recorded that in 1908 Ysaye was ordered to pay £320 to a Belgian railway guard for boxing hig ears and thus causing deafness, But he succeeded on appeal in getting the sum reduced to £60 on the grounds that the guard’s hearing was impaired before the assault. Listeners to 1YC at 9.9 p.m. on Friday, August 24, will hear Alfred Dubois (violinist) play Ysaye’s Sonata No. 3, Op. 27. Wild Man of Music | ECTOR BERLIOZ, who holds a foremost place among great masters of the orchestra, was a pioneer in his field and, as pioneers are apt to do, he often came into conflict with his contemporaries. And that was how he earned the nickname of "The Wild Man of Music." Listeners to 1YC at 10.8 p.m. on Saturday, August 25, will hear his Symphonie Fantastique, which, inspired by his love for "Ophelia," was composed in three months in 1830.