Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 743, 9 October 1953, Page 24

Open Microphone

NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD,

By

Swarf

London announced — the other day that an overture composed by a 27-years-old New Zealander, Edwin Carr, would be played before the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at a London concert in their honour on October 19. The overture, Mardi Gras; was a prize winner at the 1950 Auckland Music Festival. Edwin’ Carr, who is working as a . CABLED news item from

telephone operator in a London exchange, is now completing a new viola concerto. His musical career began with piano lessons in Wellington when he was 10 years old. Later, when he was living in Dunedin. he studied music at the University of Otago. In 1946 he returned to his home town, Auckland, and attended Mus.. Bac. lectures at Auckland University College. Edwin Carr joined the post-war trek to London, where he has been at the Guildhall Schoo] of Music studying composition under Benjamin Frankel. With two other students. he was recently looking after the Frankel flat in’ Soho while Frankel was in Italy working on an opera. He was able to work in Frankel’s own room and sunbathe on the rocf. He says it’s a "delightful apartment with silver wallpaper, two cats and a striking Epstein head of Anna, the composer’s wife.’ These

students recently went to Denham to see and hear the _ synchronisation of background music for a new film, Clouded Yellow. Frankel composed the music-other films with his music include Trottie True, Seventh Veil and Night and the City-and conducted the orchestra ‘during the two days it took to add the music to the sound track. Frankel’s overture, May Day, was performed for the first time this year at The Proms. Last year Carr toured Italy, Wass and Switzerland in a car bought for £80. and accompanied by James Stevens, another young composer, and three other musicians. Several of his works were performed by the Guildhall Orchestra this year, the latest being his © Svmphonic Suite. >

TALLY-HO!

({OMMENTING on a report from "Italy that a mathematiciah, Paolo Cavanna, uses (as well as the more conventional net) a hunting horn when col-

lecting butterflies, the Musical Times says that "apparently the insects

find Signor Paolo’s E flats irresistible. We have since tried high and low E flats out of doors on a violin, a viola and a recordef, in default of a hunting horn, without perceptible results. Either the hunting horn is a necessity or English butterflies are peculiarly resistant to the blandishment of our E flats,"

ALL IN THE VOICE

[-OR "Listener" (Wanganui): Jennifer is played by Bob Pearson. who

also. sings with his brother Alf in the show. The voice of Ivy

‘ . 4s also that of Ted Ray gone falsetto for the occasion. Soppy is Peter Sellers.

SOUTHERN COUNTRY CALENDAR

STAN WHYTE, who has been conducting 4YA’s Country Calendar Sessions since 1950. and who has also

acted as question master fer five OtagoSouthland

Young Farmers’ Club Radio ‘Leadership Contests, is retiring this year because of indifferent health and pressure of work.

His farewell broadcast will be heard on Wednesday, October 28, at 7.20 p.m. Stan Whyte's introduction to radiq was several years ago when he conducted Farmers’ Forum at 4ZB. He has been associated with the Young Farmers’ Club movement since it started, has

been on the Dominion’ Executive and is a life member of the Otago-Southland Council. Stan’ likes country people and is intensely interested in all kinds of farming. He is fond of gardening and, being a patient man, is also a fisherman. Numerous trips through the province, visiting agricultura] and_ pastoral shows ° and doing on-the-spot interviews have contributed to the interest of his Country Calendar.

DEATH OF ROGER QUILTER

[HE songs of Roger Quilter, who died on September 21, have been described as true descendants of the

Golden Age of English vocal music. The ‘theatre, too, benefited from ome

of his compositions, for instance, ‘the music for the children’s play, Where the

Rainbow Ends. From time to time Sir Henry Wood presented Quilter’s music at the Promenade Concerts at Queen’s Hall, "R.Q.," as his friends liked to call him, first attracted notice’ by his settings of Shakespeare. Famous singers like Elwes, Plunket Greene and John Coates helped to make his work known and admired. = Ss »

CULT OF THE COLOSSAL

f POPULAR judgment of music is still deeply tinged with megalomania. The public seems . bemused by mere size, and mistakes size for quality. The popular epithet for music is "great," and also for performers of music. Music

cannot ever, it seems, like other forms of art, be merely good or beautiful. I suggest

that this point of view is as Victorian and out-of-date as bustles and -muttonchop whiskers. . . I think the trouble is partly due to. the gramophone which offers us the greatest moment and the greatest work to repeat at any moment as we will, Personally, I'd rather have a spontaneous ditty from a simple singer, but then I like music; not elaboration. Let me plead as often as I can for musical quality and simplicity, spontaneity rather than bombastic ‘"greatness.’-The late Hubert Foss, who was formerly Music. Editor of the Oxford Unity Press, writing in the Musical Times.

MUSIC FOR POEMS \

MA4* SAUNDERS, New Zealand composer, who has written a great deal of music of all kinds for the BBC

while living in England during the last .20 years,

has been commissioned by the Corporation to compose music for two poems by Edward. Leatr--The Jumblies and The Dong with the Luminous Nose. The work will be for soloist, mixed chorus and

i et eo Ol chamber orchestra, and ‘the first performance will be on the BBC’s Third Programme at the end of this year with the composer conducting, Auckland is. Max Saunders’s home town.’

PORTABLE ORGAN

~RACIE FIELDS’S sad tale of the guest who took a harp to a party and was never asked to play, is not so improbable as it sounds. An English musician, Robin Richmond, has taken

an electric organ weighing nearly a ton to innumer-

able parties. The difference is that’ as one of the leading swing organists he is always asked to play. The organ is transported in a __ shooting brake specially built for the purpose. Richmond’s first professional job was an organist was ata Lambeth cinema which on Sundays was used as a Wesleyan chapel. The instrument had a _ special switch which’ could be used to eliminate the more lively "effects" and convert the organ to its Sunday purpose. Richmond was sacked when he failed to adjust this switch for a Sunday service. Later he became" organist at a big Lon- ~ don picture house in the days when the "mighty howitzer’ was a_ popular feature of the show. :

THEY COMMANDEERED A TRAIN

N September, 1951, the newspapers headlined an escape story that might have come straight from\a film thriller when a party of anti-Communist Czechs

escaped tftroin Czechoslovakia’ to the American zone

by ‘commandeering a train and dashing across the frontier in it. The full story has been told in a book by Martin Fiala, which Marjorie Banks adapted * for ‘radio and produced in the BBC Light Programme. A> transcription was

el eee ee ee OOS Oa a OS recorded. at the time. The personal stories *of those who took part in the escape — and the elaborate precautions and. planning involved in seizing the 9.15 train from Prague to Asch make an absorbing hour’s listening. The NineFifteen to Freedom, as this programme is called, will be broadcast by 3YC at 9.30 p.m. on Thursday, October 15, by 2YA at 9.30 a.m., and 3YA at 10.0 a.m. on Sunday, October 18: