Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 767, 2 April 1954, Page 24

Open Microphone

\ NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD.

By

Swarf

REDERICK FARLEY, actor, producer and broadcaster, told me just before he left New Zealand for Australia a couple of years ago that he expected to put in about six months there, after which he would probably return to England. I saw in Australia’s The Listener Ol ee ee ee ee ee ee. ee ee ee Sie eS he

in the other day that Mr. Farley would be leaving for England shortly. He had some tart things to say about the Australian stage. ; Discipline on the stage, he is reported to have said, was poor and there was an inclination to let players go their own way and hope for the best. He found that more in the professional theatre than in repertory. His two experiences as a commercial theatre producer had not been happy. In neither case had he been given a free hand in the selection of casts, with ‘the result that there were many misfits. "As usual it was the producer and neither the players nor the management who had to take the blame from the critics." Farley continued that the social side of the movement-always one of the . worst aspects of the purely amateur theatre — was allowed to exercise too much influence. Until it was eliminated the theatre must inevitably suffer .. . Much potential talent was being wasted. with too many companies ‘operating separately, each jea'ous bf prestige Competition was a good thing, but could be overdone, he added. Frederick Farley came to New Zealand six years ago as producer for the Canterbury Repertory Society and then joined the Community Arts Service, touring the North Island. Later he made his headquarters -in Wellington, producing for the Wellington Repertory Society and The Thespians. *

SINGER'S DEATH

T a St. Patrick’s Night concert in Christchurch some years ago a wellknown loeal singer was on the _ programme for a bracket of songs. An entertainer who liked to give his audience

a surprise now and then, he chose as his first number "Hail

Caledonia."’ Englishmen blenched, but felt easier when Irishmen let go with the applause. He followed this with "The Border Ballad"-‘"bloody fray" and all. Again the Irish roared their delight and the singer had to produce several other

songs before the audience let him go. (The concert was held, by the way, in the Caledonian Hall.) The entertainer was Arthur Macdonald, who died in Dunedin last month at the age of 64. Born in Arbroath, Scotland, he came to New Zealand before the First World War, settling first in Christchurch and then moving to Dunedin. He was particularly well known for his interest in Scottish organisations. *

NEW LIFE FOR DAD AND DAVE

J-MPHASIS is on comedy in a new Dad and Dave series now being recorded in Sydney, according to The

Broadcaster, Although the form of the show has been radically changed the old cact

a*, .-- 2s 2a -+ oe s e remains intact arid the script writer is still Lorna Bingham. The new version is in complete half-hour editions. *

IT WASN'T LEMONADE

] ESLEY M. CAMPBELL (Christchurch): Mark Hambourg-he toured New Zealand in 1903, and again in 1931 when he and Peter Dawson teamed up -was one of the earliest pianists to make gramophone records. He boasts

that his name has been given to an orchid and a cocktail. In an article which he wrote in the

form of his own "obituary" he said: "It could certainly be said of Mark Hambourg that he took music all over tlie world, wherever there was a piano to be found, and he never deviated from his principle that, no matter what the surroundings, he played only the very best music." Hambourg was born in the Russian village of Bogutchar in 1879 and his first teacher was a devoted aunt. Lots of stories are told about him. One concerns a concert with the Moscow Conservatoire Orchestra before the Grand Duke Constantine. The pianist was plied beforehand with champagne which he

thought was lemonade. Nothing happened until he neared the end of a concerto, when he had a complete lapse of memory but was able to improvise 48 bars until he found the way back. On a

visit to Australia he met Mark Twain who arrived one evening at a concert as Hambourg stepped on the platform. Taking the applause as a personal compliment, the American humorist bowed right and left, then spotted Hambourg, promptly dived into his seat and buried his face in his programme. Having a simple nature, Hambourg likes nothing better than getting small boys to blow on the front of his gold watch which immediately snaps open. But when twinges of rheumatism come along or something. upsets his schedules, his broken-English expressions would do credit to an R.S.M. In his Masters of the Keyboard, Donald Brook says that Hambourg 1s inclined to deprecate the modern practice

of playing concertos from memory, because he feels that the pianist has to concentrate so intensely upon remember- ' ing the entire work that he cannot let himself go _ sufficiently to produce a really brilliant, spontaneous interpretation. . Note: Photographs of the other pianm... you mention will be published if space permits. a

TALKS FROM NELSON

(GERALD COX, a young Yorkshireman, is the author and speaker of two talks to be broadcast by 2XN Nel-

son on the two next Wednesdays at 8.45 p.m, The first "The Pied Piper and _ the

Circus Boy" came from a chance meeting with a former circus hand; the second "The Sleepy Island" is about Stewart Island and, I’m told, it will \ probably find a place in a book Cox * is writing about his hitch-hike round the world. *

" THE VIRTUOSO

‘ uw *ONCERT LOVER" (Akaroa) asks ~" for the meaning of virtuoso "as applied to a musician." The Concise Oxford Dictionary gives ‘"Person with special knowledge of or taste for works of art or virtu; person dakilled in the mechanical part of a fine

art." In English usage the former part of this definition was the

more in force during the 18th Century and the latter part is the more in force at present, with a special application to music, which now rather tends to monopolise the term, says Percy Scholes. There is a general inclination on the part of the public to value virtuosity for its own sake whereas it is, properly, a means to an end. The reward of the instrumental virtuoso in glory and cash is beyond that of any other honest profegsion (except that of the prima donna). In the late 1890’s Paderewski made a eo by returning from an American "Zour with a net gain of £46,000, but after the First World War he made in

two years £208,000, and it was stated that the pianist Hofmann, the violinists Heifetz and Kreisler, and the singers Galli-Curci, Schumann Heink, McCormack and Chaliapin were about that time scratching along equally well. *

SEEING IS BELIEVING

\/ IVIENNE CHATTERTON has been broadcasting for the BBC since 1929, and her voice is known to a very large number of people in Britain, particularly listeners to a daily broadcast serial, Mrs. Dale’s Diary. People anxious to see

what she is really like are always asking her to open bazaars, garden fetes and other functions.

Vivienne, who is said to give as good a performance away from the microphone as before it, always starts her speech with the same story. She likens herself to the ordinary little man _ staggering under the burden of taxa.ion who once went into the Inland Revenue Offices and wandered about. An official asked if there was anything he wanted. "No thank you, not at all," said the little man, "I just wanted to see the people I work for.’’ "And that’s how I feel amongst you," says Vivienne. "I like to come and see the people I’m working for." *

RURAL BROADCASTS IN AUCKLAND

/HEN anchor-swallowing time approaches, seafarers — particularly master mariners it’s said — start to hanker for the agricultural life. How

much of that 1s true I don’t know, but one young

mariner, Bruce Broadhead, didn’t wait to become a master. His sea-going career began as a cadet in the Merchant Navy in 1945 end ended a few months later. Soon afterwards he went to Canterbury Agricultural College, Lincoln, and in 1950 he

took his Bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Science. For three years he worked on a variety of farms in both the South and North Islands and then went back to Lincoln as assistant lecturer in rural education. This involved among other things organising extension activities, including broadcasting, and he gave a number of talks on farming subjects. Bruce Broadhead also investigated farm labour problems in Springs County, Canterbury; this meant interviews with about 200 farmers and farm workers. Now he has been appointed Programme Officer (Rural Broadcasts) at Auckland. His hobbies are music, literature, yachting, climbing and my cars. |T has been reported that Kirsten Flagstad, famous Wagnerian soprano, recently permitted Elisabeth Schwarzkopf to substitute for her own voice on two high C’s in a recording of Tristan and Isolde.