Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 727, 19 June 1953, Page 24

Open Microphone

* dul ar NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD,

By

Swarf

his Saturday, June 20, at 8.0 | p.m., the Royal Wellington Choral Union, with the Wellington Studio Orchestra conducted by Terence Vaughan, will present two works, Flourish for a Coronation (Vaughan Williams) and Sir Arthur ik the Wellington Town Hall t

Sullivan’s cantata The Golden Legend. The soloists in the cantata will be Dora Drake (soprano), Kitty Petrie (contralto), John Chew (tenor) and Ken MacAuley (baritone). This programme will be relayed by 2YA. Kitty Petrie y 4 ae

(née Galbraith), young wife of. Bruce Petrie who is frequently heard broadcasting the virtues of wool and in 2YA book reviews and other programmes, was born in Wanganui. During the war she spent two years in Army service in Wellington and later went to Christchurch where she met her husband. She told me last week that she had been singing since she was about 11 years old, encouraged by her mother who was a ‘cellist in the orchestra attached to the Nelson School of. Music, and by her aunt, Hilda Jacobs, Nelson soprano. She has appeared in A Tale of Old Japan with the Royal Wellington Choral Union, in presentations of Handel’s Messiah at Christchurch and Lower Hutt, and in Dido and Aeneas ut Christchurch, and she is a member of Stanley Oliver’s Schola Cantorum (Wellington). Kitty is anyenthusiastic gardener at her home in Tawa Flat-"and a pretty competent one, too," says Bruce-and she is the mother of three children. On Wednesday, June 24, at 7.22 p.m., listeners to 2YC will hear Kitty Petrie in a studio recital of four songs by César Franck. Fs

FEMALE — IMPERSONATOR

‘| HE photogenic young woman seen on right is Elizabeth Wing, ° an actress in the cast of The Deceiver, an

Australian serial now running at 4ZB on Mondays at 10.0

p-m. Her husband, a Melbourne businesss man who is also interested in the theatre, gave her every encouragement, but she had to work

hard for five years to secure any sort of recognition. At first she did what a good many others have had to do-read commercials and fill occasional "bit" parts in plays. But all the time she was de-

veloping her acting technique by playing roles in the amateur theatre. At last she was given a chance to play Muriel Starr’s famous part in a radio adaptation of Within the Law, and thereupon

became entitied to regard herseli as "made." Elizabeth Wing is a female impersonator in the sense that she won a competition with a portrayal of the film star Luise Rayner. This earned her a holiday in Sydney and a radio set. During the war she served with the A.W.A.S., appeared in many shows for the forces and compered some of them.

MAN AND THE SOIL

*« ‘| HE next speaker in the BBC series Man ande the Soil, now running at 3YC on Monday evenings, will be Anthony Barnett, an expert on the control of pests-in the agricultural sense, that

is. He is Lecturer in the Department of _ Zoology at Glasgow University

and he recently returned to academic life after a period of research in the Ministry of Food. His work has taken him to Malta, among ; other places. For some years he has been well known to listeners to the BBC Overseas Services as a broadcaster on biology. Anthony Barnett’s talk will be heard at 7.30 p.m. on June 22, aa +

VERY MUSICAL

a ~-EPTION of BBC programmes frequently leaves something to be desired (wrote a correspondent to the Manchester Guardian recently). We were

having difficulty in eetting a Chopin

piece my wife particularly wanted to hear. We had tried the Northern Home Service and Northern Ireland, and each time distortion ruined the effect, Then the. gentle old

Irish lady who was paying us a. visit that evening made a suggestion. "Try the Welsh Regional, dear," she quavered. "I understand they're a very musical people,"

CONTRALTO RECITAL

AR ELOW is a photograph of Mabel Roper (mezzo-contralto), who was heard last week from 2XA Wanganui in

a studio recital of four songs by Brahms. On Sunday, June 21, at

8.25 p.m., she will present a studio recital from 2YA, sing-

ing "O Rest in the Lord" and "But the Lord is Mindful of His Own" (Mendelssohn), and "O Thou that Tellest" and "He Shall Feed His Flock" (Handel). z

ACCENT

"| IDDLEBROW" sends this cutting from the English Melody Maker: In a prominent position, under a picture of Anne Shelton which carried the head-

ing "Oh, Anne! You ought to know better ...° the following letter

appeared in the London Daily Express: Dear, dear. Those crooners in dance bands. Little breathless girl crooners warble: "We won't live in a cass-le." Young men crooners sing: "Some en-chann-ted evening’-while the young things in the audience swoon with joy. en Anne Shelton, who ought to know better, sings: "If you loved me haff as much as I love you." It infuriates me. I cannot think what is wrong with our English accent. The Melody Maker's Maurice Burman comments that the situation is far worse than that, and it was unfortunate that the writer should pick on Anne Shelton, who seldom offends. "The real culprits are our younger singers who not only sing with a pronounced ‘American’ accent but, when they have a few words to say on the radio, speak in Americanese . . , Listeners don't like phoney accents. Some of the best American vocalists are now singing--or trying to king -- with an English accent. And though it may seem absurd to suggest that our vocalists try to put on an English accent because it’s the vogue among

the best American singers, I know of no other way that would so easily persuade our people to sing in their .native manner." ? [Note: As to the words, they go to prove that the Ruling Passion is still the main ingredient of popular vocal music.] *

CHINESE BASS

\ L-KWEI SZE, Chinese bass-baritone, who is to tour New Zealand this year for the NZBS, giving solo recitals and appearing with the National Orchestra, is expected here in September. His wife,

Nancy Lee Sze, will be his accompanist. Yi-Kwei Sze attended

a school in Shanghai conducted by missionaries, and it was there that he first learned English and the rudiments of Western music. He entered the National Conservatorium of Music at Shanghai and while still an undergraduate made his professional debut in Haydn’s The Three Seasons. He was so successful that

he was engaged to sing in Rigoletto, Tosca and Aida with a_ professional opera company. After graduating from the Conservatorium in 1937.he began a concert career in China and carried on until the Japanese invasion? He gave hundreds of concerts for Chinese and British relief work and appeared in radio in Hong Kong; Yi-Kwei Sze is the first Chinese artist to make a career on the internationa] concert stage, and it is reported that he has a voice which, for power and’ beauty, has been compared |. with that of Chaliapin. Nevertheless, it took three’ years of concerts in Nanking, Hong Kong and Shanghai, supplemented by gifts from well-wishers, to collect enough money for the singer to go to America. Yi-Kwei Sze’s Carnegie Hall debut in, 1947 received high praise, and a few. weeks later when he appeared in Messiah with the New York Oratorio, Society, the New York Times singled him out for special mention. The Szes have one son, Alexander, named after the bass, Kipnis, with whom Yi-Kwei Sze studied.