Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 730, 10 July 1953, Page 24

Open Microphone

NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD,

By

Swarf

prano, who is just back from England after studying singing under Roy Henderson and Waltef Gruner, and also for a few weeks in Paris, met several New Zealand students. She gained the impression that they are doing very well: The other morning she told me of some of the problems students going abroad are likely to meet. One was finding the right WOOD, Wellington _so-,

teacher for their particular needs; another was discovering accommodation with a landlady who didn’t mind a student practising for a considerable time every day. Concert-going, so necessary to a student, took quite an amount of planning because the choice was vast and tickets had to be bought some time ahead. In London and in Paris, said Mrs. Wood, there were singing claSses which students could attend either as listeners or performers. In Paris, Marya Freund gave lessons where students could sing anything they liked and the teacher criticised the performance. Each week Madame Freund selected a different composer, lectured about him and

demonstrated his. work. Mrs. "Wood added that she had been helped by the soprano Phyllis Mander, and that Isobel Baillie had given her some very unusual music to copy. Mrs. Wood is the wife of Professor F. L, W. Wood, Professor of History at Victoria University College, who was visiting England o» refresher leave.

MOUNTAIN MADE TO . MEASURE

Most schoolchildren are asked to "-" name the highest mountaim in the world, and to give its height. Most of them know the name, Everest, but the accepted height of this Himalayan giant, 29,002 feet above sea level, is now being challenged. Richard Williams. the

BBC's correspondent in Delhi, reported recently that it is just 100

years since surveyors established that Everest was the highest mountain in the world at 29,002 feet, but since then the accuracy of this measurement has often been disputed. The geodetic system of measuring the height of Himalayan peaks is open to a large margin of error and the first survey was made from six different points, all of them over 100 miles away from the peak. At this distance the effect of refraction can make a difference of over 1000 feet in height, and refraction changes all the time according to the density of the air. Now the Survey of India Department has decided to measure the mountain again to settle the matter for good, and surveyors are taking readings from four or five selected points inside Nepal. This time the points are all within 30 or 40 miles of the peak, which should mean a corresponding gain in accuracy. -* e

MAY | BORROW THIS?

nw /OU must have heard the story about the old professor who said to his students, "Never lend a book, Only fools lend books. You see all those books over there? They once belonged to

fools." In New Zealand. the method usually adopted in building up a private.

library is very much like the professor’s. It’s what’s. called the "free library.

system." When it comes to the borrowing and lending of books, New Zealanders are in an advanced state of communism.. (I don’t suppose it really matters very much, as long as the books are read.) "May I borrow this?" never means just that. It means, "May I un burden your shelves. of this book and add it to my collection?" -A. Ri D. Fairburn, in a NZBS Book Shop ‘talk.

SCHOOLMASTER'S PROBLEM

* "| ERENCE RATTIGAN ‘wrote his two one-act plays Harlequinade and The Browning Version for performance as a double-bill, and in their London presentation both plays were performed

by the same group of actors, headed by Eric Portman. Harleguinade deals

with the idiosyncracies of a company of touring plavers. while The

Browning Version is, a more serious study-of a schoolmaster’s problem. Later Anthony Asquith asked Rattigan to. re-write The Browning Version for the screen, and laurels fell on Michael Redgrave, who took the leading role. A radio adaptation of The Browning Version, by Cynthia Pugh, produced. in the Wellington Studios of the NZBr will be broadcast from. Station 2X Nelson on Thursday, July 16, at 9.20 p.m. The cast includes Michael Cotterill" (now of the New Zealand Players). Frederick Farley and Kenneth Firth. of

MUSIC IN THE SOUTH

\ ALERIE PERRY (nee Peppler), soprano, who will. present a studio recital of six songs by Hugo Wolf from 3YC at 8.25 p.m. on Sunday. Julv 12.

writes that music is flodrishing in South Canterbury, and that she is alwavs busv. Mrs

Perry, formerly of | Christchurch, but now living! in Waimate, where her husband, Dr. A. L. M. Perry, is Rector off the Waimate "High School, has been broadcasting in Christchurch for several

years. She is well known in both islands as a soloist in oratorio, operatic and concert work. More recently she has sung for the Waimate Choral Society and the Timaru and Ashburton Societies x

and for yeditéle at the ‘Waimate High School, at which her husband is her accompanist, Valerie Perry. was last heard in Wellington; where she sang the soprano role in Il. Trovatore, and in Christchurch at the end of last year as soloist for the Christchurch Harmonic Society’s' presentation of Handel’s Messiah. wh

SUB OR SUPER?

Lad NEW ZEALAND has produced very few of those exceptional musical men known as_ counter-tenors. I can recall only one-W, Cookson-who sang — in the Christchurch Cathedral Choir and

also in ‘the city’s Liedertafel. For approximately the last 150 years the voice has been seldom heard on

the concert platform, but in» Purcell’s day, and well on into the 18th Century it was the most popular professional yoice, according to Alfred Deller. the

English counter-tenor, who has often appeared in NZBS programmes, (Earlier this year he was heard singing the songs in the BBC’s transcription of The Tempest, part of the World Theatre series). Deller began as a chorister in a parish church choir at the age of 11. At his voice trial the organist said he would never make a singer as he had started too late. But he became solo boy and was still singing the soprano solos in Messiah when he was 16. Thereafter he sang alto, which simply meant to him the second line of music. He did not for a moment think of the way he placed his voice, but just continued to sing in the only way he knew. Deller quotes light-heartedly, and without comment, a modern manual of voice production on the counter-tenor voice. It declares that counter-tenors are extremists in one way or ‘another. "They fall within one or the other of two groups: Super-ultra clever, highly nervous, exacting of themselves and others, refined _and charming to an unusual degree. peculiarly nice and correct in interpretation and. hypersensitive; Sub-they are. stupid, phlegmatic, unreliable, with miserable manners.’ Impressions of Alfred Deller, gainiesd from his recordings and from his photoo

graph, suggest that he belongs in part or wholly to the Super group. ~~" *

NEW CONDUCTOR

| ARRY RABINOWITZ, new conduc- | tor of the augmented BBC Revue Orchestra, which is familiar to listeners to Take It From Here, was born in Johannesburg. He studied in South

Africa and at the Guildhall School af Bezisetic°in ft An.

don. From 1934 to 1946-with a a break when he was serving with the South African Army — Rabinowitz was a featured pianist with the South African Broadcasting Corporation, and conductor of the Variety Orchestra at the Johannesburg Studios. In 1946 he went to England to study and with the intention of returning to South Africa; but broadcasting, recording for gramophone companies and conducting for films and theatre kept him in England. Harry Rabinowitz is married to a South African girl, and they have two children, Karen and Simon. His. hobbies are watching Rugby football and playing lawn tennis. His present. ambition, he says, is to get some sleep.