Lunch-hour Recitals by Orchestra

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 766, 26 March 1954, Page 31

Lunch-hour Recitals by Orchestra

‘HE National Orchestra of the NZBS will again be giving lunch-hour con certs in the four main centres during the winter season. The first of these is scheduled for Wellington on Friday, April 2, the second for Auckland on April Lunch-hour concerts were first instituted during Michael Bowles’s term as conductor, and they have been held since whenever the orchestra's itinerary permitted. Their popularity has increased steadily over the years, with a considerable part of their audiences consisting of those unable to attend evening concerts. Mothers with pre-school children find them convenient, and, of course, city workers and schoolchildren in large numbers find the concerts a pleasant way to spend their lunch-hours. Many bring sandwiches with them, though not, be it noted, in wrappings that crackle. Prices for the concerts are 2/6 for the circle and 1/6 for stalls. The programmes begin at 12.15 p.m. and last till ‘1.30 or 1.45 p.m., thus providing about three quarters of an hour of music in each of the two principal lunch-hour periods. Items ate mostly short, with intervals to permit patrons to come and go with a minimum of interruption. There is, however, no objection to people entering or leaving quietly during items if their

work demands it. The programme for the first two lunch-hour concerts will consist: of Suppe’s "Poet and Peasant" Overture, Massenet’s "Meditation," Délibes’s "Sylvia" Ballet Suite, Glinka’s "Kamarinskaya," Grainger’s Irish tune "Molly on the Shore," Sullivan’s "Di Ballo" Overture, "The Swan" of Saint-Saens, and Liszt’s "Hungarian Rhapsody" No. 2.