Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 762, 26 February 1954, Page 24

Open Microphone

’ NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD,

By

Swarf

UN-TANNED from basking on the deck of the Rangitoto and from a spell at her home in New Plymouth, Doris Veale, a New Zealand pianist I met the other day, is back here for a few

weeks after seven years in London. She was busy making some recordings for _the NZBS, and these will be broadcast by the YC stations in due course. Miss Veale goes back to England in August. It was when she was four that she took her first piano lessons from her mother, Hawera-born Doris Veale told me. In 1945,° when she was 15, she gained the Scholarship of the Associated Board of the Roya] Schools of Music : for record marks in the Licentiate Diploma examination, and in addition became one of the first students to be awarded a New Zealand Government bursary for overseas study. Before leaving for London she made a six weeks’ tour of the North Island, giving over 20 concerts,\and broadcasting in the principal towns. At the Royal Academy of Music she won several awards for piano playing, including the Harold Samuel Bach prize, and was appointed a subprofessor in September, 1950. In the same year she went with a string quartet from the Royal Academy to represent England at an International Summer School of Music students organoo

ised by the Conservatoire de Musique, University of Saarbrucken. During : the past few years she has arranged the programmes of the Royal Academy students for the London County Counci] Music Appreciation concerts, and has played at more than 100 such concerts herself. In January, 1952, Doris Veale became accompanist to the London Philharmonic Choir and she has recently made appearances as soloist in the Commonwealth Artists’ programme of the BBC. Some other recent appointments have been: September, 1952, accompanist to the Croydon Philharmonic Society; May, 1953, deputy-professor on the senior staff of the Royal Academy of Music; and repetiteur and chogus coach for the world premiere of Irmelin given at Oxford by Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Doris Veale will give a studio broadcast from 2XP at 9.3 p.m. on Sunday, March 7. She will also be heard with the National Orchestra in Christchurch on May 13, and in Dunedin on May 18.

INOCULATED

¥* FTER a tour of Canada and America which succeeded beyond all expectations, the St. Paul’s Choir is home again "effectively inoculated against

anti-Americanism," as Canon L. John Collins puts it (says The Man-

chester Guardian Weekly). Through 41 cities its path was made happy by such comforting platitudes of criticism as "their tone balance is miraculous,’ and "an embarrassment of musical riches." Never before in the 1000 years of its history had the choir sung outside London. *

HERE HE IS

VER the past few months he hag been trying unsuccessfully to find a photograph of the Grace Gibson Radio Productions actor, Alan White, says John Gardiner, of Manurewa, Auckland. A photograph of Alan White as Hercule Poirot was printed in The Listener

with an article introducing the Agatha Christie Mysteries at the

ZB stations, and here he is again. White has been heard from NZBS stations recently in several Australian. serials,

Listeners will remember him as Randy Stone in Night Beat, Godowski in Dossier On Dumetrius, Dr. John Cabot in

Dr. Paul, Bill Lorimer in Night Nurse, Sean O'Farrell in January’s Daughter, Johnny Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and Marcus Kent in House of Conflict.

BERGER AND DERMOTA

D. THACKWELL (Christchurch): ’ Erna Berger was born at Dresden, and spent her childhood in Paraguay before returning home for intensive musical study..She was chosen by Fritz

Busch to sing at the , Dresden State Opera, where she scored an immediate success

which led to engagements with many important orchestras and leading opera houses of Europe. She appeared at the Bayreuth Festival with Toscanini, at Salzburg with Busch, and at the Berlin Municipal and State Opera. An opera tour took her to Copenhagen, Holland, Rome, Vienna, Bucharest, Barcelona, Geneva and London. She appeared at Covent Garden before touring Australia a year or two ago. Anton Dermota, principal lyric. tenor with the Vienna State Opera, will arrive

tour with the ABC. He appears regularly at the Salzburg Festival, and will sing there just before leaving for Australia. Recently he took the principal tenor role in Beethoven’s Fidelio in the Buenos Aires Opera House. Dermota, a young Yugoslav, makes a specialty of }Mozart, and he is heard in the latest recordings of The Magic Flute. His wife, Hilde Berger-Weyerwald, will visit Australia as his accompanist.

DOG BREEDER

PS g | NTERESTED" (Christchurch) writes: "Would you please print something about Donald Voorhees, whose music was heard two or three years ago in YVOA Sunday afternoon programmes from 3ZB?" Donald Voorhees is one of the veterans of radio, as well as the New York

musical scene. Although he is still in his forties, he was conducting

music for radio programmes even before the formation of the National Broad-

casting Company, in 1926. The family can trace its lineage back to an ancestor who settled in the U.S, in the 17th Century. Donald was born in Guthville, Pennsylvania, and he began his musical education at the age of five. Within two years he was studying the piano and shortly thereafter the organ. While still in grammar school he became a pupil of Dr. J. F. Wolle, founder and conductor of the Bethlehem (Pennsylvania) Bach Choir. During rehearsals the old man allowed the youngster to try his hand at conducting the choir and at times to play. the organ accompariment. News of Voorhees’s ability spread rapidly through the town, and within a year the manager of the local theatre let the boy play the piano with the house orchestra. Later Voorhees became conductor at that same theatre-a post he held for two years. Sirce the theatre was one in which Broadway dramatic , and musical shows /iad their try-out performances, Donald was in a position to meet many managers and artists. For several years after that he was conductor for outstanding Broadway musi-

cal productions, and this led to his conducting a series of Saturday night brcadcasts of light music. In 1928 Voorhees turned his full attention to radio. He has appeared with such artists as Jascha Heifetz, John Charles Thomas, Lily Pons and Marian Anderson. Among other performers heard with Voorhees’s orchestra are Gladys Swarthout, Ezio Pinza, Fritz Kreislker, Gregor Piatigorski and Jussi Bjorling. His principal hobby is breeding Scotch terriers. *

MALE EMANCIPATION

"(\NLY a man could have invented the silent art of angling. He could fill the emptiness around him with his

dreams and adventures of the imagina-

tion. He would know nothing more desirable than to live on a lonely islandespecially after his woman has given him the length and breadth of her tongue." — André cker, speaking about talking women Sa a BBC programme.