Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 795, 15 October 1954, Page 24

Open Microphone

NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD

BACK FROM BBC

ORKING for the BBC is like. belonging to a big club, according to Ben Furby, who recently returned to work for the NZBS after a long spell on the technical side of radio in England. "There are some twelve thousand people employed by the Corporation, but they take a great personal

interest in you, Ben said. "They give you a wedding present when you marry, and so on. On

the BBC’s thirtieth anniversary there were two huge parties-so as-to allow the rostered staff to attend-in the Wembley Stadium, with about two thousand people’ present each night. Music was supplied by famous bands like Victor Silvester’s and Stanley Black’s, and the compéres were Ted Ray and Jimmy Edwards." Ben spent six months with the General Overseas Service, sending out programmes to North America, the West Indies and Europe. From their studios at 200 Oxford Street the G.O.S. transmitted Radio Newsreel at 6.0 am. each day. With an eye for the difficulties which often plague NZBS technicians receiving the broadcast at

Makara Radio, Ben used to modulate the transmitter with extreme care. However, there was one inglorious occasion when he "made a blue" by bringing in Big Ben on top of the programme. Life for Ben the Smaller became even more interesting when "he was transferred to Outside Broadcasts. The job might mean scrambling round installing gear in the roof of the Royal Festival Hal] one day, or getting lost in the vastnesses of the Admiralty the next. We were interested to hear from him how thoroughly BBC church relays are rehearsed. On the day before the broadcast a minister of the particular denomination (who is attached to the staff of the BBC), accompanied by two technicians and a driver, goes out to the church for a complete rehearsal with the resident minister and his choir. The whole service is scripted as well. Ben was in.on the BBC’s "Big Show"-the Coronation. From a TV-equipped control room behind Nelson’s Column, technicians covered 30 relay points serving domestic and overseas commentators. On the night before the great dav, all BBC staff involved slept in "The Buildings,’ which are fitted with beds and showers, and they walked to their posts next morning. Free breakfast and lunch were available at canteens set up at each post, and there was a bar, too. He added that the professional attitude to broadcasting of such musicians as Eve Boswell, Geraldo, Joe Loss and Victor Silvester was a technician’s /delight. "They always responded to technical demands exactly as you asked them to," he said, "unlike many amateur musicians." One of his most enjoy/able experiences occurred when a studio engineer wanted to get an earlier train home-and he found himself in the contrel room for Joy Nichols’s last broadcast in Take It From Here.

OPERA STAR

* "GHE is perfection," Victor de Sabata said recently of-the- soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. "When I read a score I hear every soprano part with her

timbre and sensibility in my ears." Toscanini, Von Karajan and other conductors have echoed these words, and to the critical Milanese public she is "nostra

divina Swarzkopt.’ Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, whom A. Boyes (Auckland) has enquired about, is one of the greatest

operatic artists of our time. She made her debut with a Berlin repertory company at Easter, 1938. as the Flower-

maiden in Parsifal, a part which she had to learn in an emergency in 36 hours. In 1941 she sang 187 performances in minor roles, and became the pupil of Ivogun and Michel Raucheisen, who developed her sense of style and prepared her for her first lieder recitals. She was later engaged as principal coloratura soprano of the Vienna Opera, but a severe illness kept her off the stage from the beginning of 1943 to April, 1944. She was next engaged by the Covent Garden Company, with whom she sang the roles of Pamina, Sophie, Violetta, Mimi, Marcellina, Susanna, Manon, Butterfly and Ev’chen. At the end of this contract she gave up repertory opera and began a series of appearances in Salzburg, La Scala and Vienna which startled the post-war music world. At Salzburg she appeared with Irmgard Seefried in a lavish production of Mozart’s Figaro, produced amd conducted by Herbert von Karajan. In 1949 she toured Australia, and in 1951 she sang Donna Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni with Victoria de los Angeles as Donna Anna. In Octobet of that year she sang Anne Truelove in the world premiére of Stravinsky's The Rake’s Progress in Venice; in 1952. she appeared as the Marschalla’ in Strauss Der Rosenkavalier (a near-perfect pr duction again by Von Karajan); and in 1953 she sang in the world premiére’ of Carl Orff’s Trionfi. She will be heard in a recorded recital with Irmgard Seefriecé from 2YZ at 8.25 p.m. this Sunday, October 10. oe

NEWSBOY INTO PIANIST

"HE many New Zealanders who were impressed by the charm and modesty : as well as the artistry of the Hungarianborn pianist Bela Siki when he visited

this country not long ag0, may recall that Siki was a pupil of the Rumanian pianist

€ Dinu Lipatti, who died in 1950 whey

he was only 33. The story of how the two met says a good deal about the character of both men. Though Siki was already professor of piano at the Budapest Conservatorium when he sought asylum in Switzerland, in 1947, he found

life so hard there that in the end he became a newsboy, delivering papers from 5.0 a.m. to 8.0 a.m. for about £10 a month, Just managing to keep alive, he spent the rest of the time in practice and study. When Lipatti heard that the boy who brought his paper was a

pianist, he asked the young Mungarian to play for him. From then on Siki had a weekly lesson from Lipatti, for which the Rumanian would accept no payment. This went on till Lipatti died, and by that time they had’ become close friends. *

JOLLY ROGERS

‘THE musical ideas of Shorty Rogers are said to be among the most potent in the present jazz movement, and an LP Album called Shorty Rogers and His Giants, currently being heard from the YA stations, gives listeners

some idea of what can do. It includes "Mambo del Crow," "Diablo’s Dance," "Pirouette," and

other Shorty Rogers compositions, ihe next broadcast will be from 4YA at 10.45 p.m. on Wednesday, October 20. Milton "Shorty" Rogers, whom "Kentonia" (Opotiki) has asked for information about, was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 1924, and was first heard of with the Will Bradley band in the early 1940s. He then joined a septet headed by his brother-in-law, Red Norvo, before being drafted into the Army. He played with the Woody Herman Herd of 1945, left to do some freelancing, and then rejoined Herman in 1947 as trumpeter and arranger. In composing such pieces as "Back Talk" and "Keen and Peachy" for Herman’s Herd. as well as a number of pieces for the smaller Herman group known as the Woodchoppers, Shorty soon became one of Herman’s most valued arrangers. Later he worked as trumpeter and arranger with Stan.Kenton, turning out such compositions as "Jambo" and "Jolly Rogers." At present he is a member of the Lighthouse Jazz Club unit at Hermosa Beach, California. *

OLD PRO

;:IGHT years ago the Alex Lindsay String Orchestra was only a name in the head of a determined young musician who had just come home from the war, Nowadays the orchestra is fairly

well established, Dut the going is still tough for a small, independent string

group in this country. Alex Lindsay, an Invercargill boy whose first ambition was to be an All Black, talks about the career of the professional musician in New Zealand in a series of talks called Suite in Six Movements. They are being heard from 2YC at 10.0 p.m. on Monday evenings. *

MELODY MAKER

MARY NEGUS, who is heard with the *"* Oswald Cheesman Sextet in Saturday’s night’s programme [ Love a

Melody (YA stations, 8.15 p.m.), has broadcast from both National and Commercial stations of the NZBS for a num-

ber of years. She has taken leading roles in Auckland Amateur Operatic productions, and in 1946 she was

soprano soloist for the Auckland Choral — Society’s production of Messiah. She

was granted a scholarship before the war by Professor Roland Foster, of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, but when the war broke out she was unable to take it up. Throughout the war years she was a member of the Army Education and Welfare Service concert parties which put on performances of Gilbert and Sullivan in Army camps under the direction of the NZBS. She is now married and has two children. She jg also

a keen tennis player. But she is still determined not to give up her music. ~

ARNOLD FOSTER

~OME of the most delightful songs we hear on the air are in the arrangements of Arnold Foster, the Yorkshire composer, who since the death of Cecil Sharp has been entrusted by the English Folk Dance and Song Society with

most of the arrangement of English folk-dance tunes for orchestra and piano. "M.B.M.," of Pal-

merston North, has asked for information about Foster. He was born in 1898 at Sheffield and studied under Vaughan Williams, another folk-song enthusiast, at the Royal College of Music. In 1926 he was music-master at Westminster School and in 1929 director of music at Morley College, London. He was the conductor and founder of the English Madrigal Choir, and in 1936 honorary conductor of the Whitsuntide Singers and Players. He is a specialist in the conducting of Tudor choral music, and has achieved a reputation for reviving and conducting unknown or neglected choral and orchestral works. His compositions include a piano Concerto on Country Dance Tunes, a Suite for Strings on English. Folk Airs, a ballet, Midsummer Eve, Autumn Idyll for small orchestra. He has also published many collections of English and Manx folk songs. Foster’'s contemporary, Alec Rowley, whom "M.B.M." also enquires about, is still alive as far as we know here. He is well known here for the children’s song book which he arranged specially for the NZBS Broadcasts to Schools Department in 1948, and dedicated to the children of New Zealand.