Other European Festivals

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 776, 4 June 1954, Page 18

Other European Festivals

«VERY year-not only in Salzburg or Edinburgh or The Hague, but all over Europe through the northern sum-mer--famous" concert halls, opera houses, old castles aud palaces are given over to music festivals that have become traditional. Listeners to 2YC are now able to follow week by week the Calendar of European Festivals of 1954, hear (continued on next paége)

(continued from previous page) about the places in which they are held and listen to recordings of some of the music the European audiences are hearing. The series started last week and further dates and times scheduled so far are: This Friday, June 4, at 9.0 p.m., Friday, June 11, at 9.0 p-m., and Thursday, June 17, at 8.45 p.m.\ Other dates and times will be announced later in the programme pages. The programmes are wide enough in content to include almost any taste. The operas of Mozart and Richard Strauss are still the most popular in Salzburg, Vienna, Aix-en-Provence and Glyndebourne (which tends to favour Mozart) and in Munich and Zurich, where the emphasis is on Strauss works. Other festivals concentrate on the works of one composer; Wagner is featured in Bayreuth, Bach in Ansbach, Grieg in Bergen, and Sibelius in Helsinki. Copenhagen: has festivals devoted entirely to ballet. Open air productions are also becoming widespread. Augsburg includes a festival of Italian opera in its summer season at the Rotes Tor, Bregenz will offer Die Fledermaus, and in the Val d’Enfer at les Baux near Aix-en-Provence, Gounod’s Mireille will be performed in the priginal setting of Mistral’s poem. © The new series of. programmes from 2YC will last for about three months.

Music and Variety from ZBs HE BBC light programmes London Studio Melodies and Palace of Varieties will shortly be back on the air from.the commercial stations, As always, the studio melodies will include "something old, something new," and will be played by top-line British bands. The variety programmes, now in their 15th year, and-still, being produced by Ernest Longstaffe, turn back the clock to the days whey music hall was a convivial and. full-b¥ooded entertainment. Early programmes in London Studio Melodies include Latin American music by Bernard Monshin’s Concert Tango Orchestra and a blend of popular tunes and old favourites by Jack Coles and his Orchestre Moderne. As chairman in Palace of Varieties Rob Currie is nobly keeping up the old traditions. He appears for broadcasts in rubicund make-up and an expanse of glazed shirt-front, relishes any verbal give and take with the audience, and is ever ready to oblige with a number when called on. London Studio .Melodies plays from all ZBs and.2ZA at 7.0 p.m. on Sundays, beginning June 6. Palace of Varieties is scheduled from 2, 3 and 4ZB and 2ZA at 8:30 p.m.; and 1ZB at 10.0 p.m. on Sundays, beginning June 13.