Classics for Sunday Evening

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 786, 13 August 1954, Page 26

Classics for Sunday Evening

NEAT week, for the first time, the NZBS Commercial Network will broadcast a concert by the National Orchestra. This will inaugurate a new Sunday evening series entitled ZB Concert Hall. The first programme will consist of Vaughan Williams's "Fantasia on Greensleeves" and Cowen’s "Language of Flowers" suite. Two subsequent programmes will also be by the National Orchestra. The conductor is Warwick Braithwaite. The remainder of the programme in the first series will comprise excerpts from the latest LP recordings, featuring some of the most prominent names in the concert world today. Some of the discs will be first recordings by artists, and will be for most listeners the first opportunity of hearing them. Included in the series will be some of the latest recordings made by Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra; by Inez Matthews, contralto, who has sung with great success in Carmen Jones, and with Todd Duncan in Lost in the Stars, and is in constant demand for concert appearances; and by David Oistrakh, the famous Russian violinist. Qistrakh (Listener, July 30) has become almost a legend from behind the "Iron Curtain." He has seldom performed in Western countries, but whenever he has he has drawn acclaim from the critics. In America, on the basis of recordings alone, he has been ranked with such masters as Heifetz and Menuhin. Toscanini conducted the NBC Symphony for the last time in April this year, thus ending 68 years as a conductor and 17 years with the orchestra specially formed for him. Before leaving for Italy, however, he returned once to the podium-to perfect some recordings in which one or two notes had failed to satisfy him. Toscanini was always a perfectionist. After his final concert, the New York Times critic Olin Downes wrote: "There has never been a more gallant and intrepid champion of great music, or a_ spirit that flamed higher, or a nobler defender of the faith."

William Kapell, one of the brightest hopes among modern pianists, will be represented by some recordings from the last series made before his :death. He was killed in an air accident near San Francisco in October last year while on his way home from a tour of Australia. There will also be a programme by Roberta Peters-the latest, and, from all reports, the brightest star of the Met. She has been singing the coloratura roles taken by the famed Luisa Tetrazzini, at the turn of the century, by Galli-Curci during the first quarter, and by Lily Pons in the thirties. Recordings by these three great artists will be heard along with that of Miss Peters. Another programme will feature other "Unforgotten Stars" of singing, with recordings by Enrico Caruso, Giovanni Martinelli, John McCormack, Tito Schipa, Lucrezia Bori, Rosa Ponselle, and other "greats." ZB Concert Hall plays from all ZB stations and 2ZA at 9.0 p.m. on Sundays, beginning August 22.