Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 797, 29 October 1954, Page 28

Open Microphone

ADVANCE AUSTRALIA!

ENOVATIONS were being made to the Waring-Taylor Street studios in Wellington the other day when we went around looking for Linda Parker and Ronald Dowd, the popular Australian singers who are touring with the National Orchestra and giving studio recitals as well. "James Robertson gave

me the key to his room so that we could come here and _ practice."

Dowd told us. "But when we arrived we found the carpenters had removed the door during the night, so we just walked in.’"’ Someone had placed a sheet of plywood over the opening in the meantime, so the singers had a certain amount of privacy. Ronald Dowd, who must be one of the most genial tenors we have seen in this country, spoke to us about the recent tour of the Australian National Opera Company, with which he scored an outstanding personal success as leading tenor. "We want to come’ back," he said. "We owe £5000 to the New Zealand public, but we aren’t ashamed of that. It’s one of the premiums of putting opera on. Of course, we didn’t get remission of entertainment tax as we had hoped, and we don’t suggest any criticism of the New Zealand Government for that. But we do suggest that we

come here again, and I would like to add that there is strong evidence for some support. I do know we enjoyed our last tour tremendously, and all members of the company want to come back." He added that Warwick Braithwaite, who has taken over as musical director and conductor of the company, was "the very best bet we could possibly have got. We look on Warwick as a thorough craftsman, whose 30 years’ experience in opera is absolutely invaluable to us, especially as he was in at Sadler’s Wells in the early days and knows all the probJems faced by a new opera company at the beginning of its career." Linda Parker mentioned that she had toured Germany with the Sadler’s Wells company (not Covent Garden, as had previously been reported) under Warwick Braithwaite. The gay little soprano told us, too, about her recitals with Spanish guitar, which she regards as something of a novelty, "It’s the first time they’ve had here a singer with guitar who is also an opera singer," she said with a smile. She said that after her last visit to New Zealand in 1953, when she sang with the National Orchestra, she had been to Canada (where she sang for the CBC) and the United States, and then on to London. She had gone down to Spain to attend the spring fair at Seville, and it was there she heard the Spanish guitar playing which captivated her. "It filled me with enthusiasm because of the colour it can lend to a voice that no other instrument can give," she said. "I saw possibilities in it for folk rhythms and a degree of intimacy which was quite new to me, and back in London I bought a guitar and had lessons with John Gavall, one of the best radio and TV guitar players in England. I’ve collected folk songs and given recitals at Australian universities and so On since I’ve been back." Linda Parker hag recorded one guitar recital for broadcast here at a later date. :

MOOD MUSIC

"a (GEORGE MELACHRINO js the son of the founder of a well-known firm of English cigarette makers, but he can’t star: -Cigarettes. "I’ve tried occ:

~ et >. +. Le, ee ee just to be sociable," he Says. "But it’s no good. I just don’t like the

taste." George was the’ musical member of

his family. He won a scholarship to the Trinity College of Music at 14 and got his first professional job, as second fiddle in the pit orchestra of a London theatre, while. he was still a student. He has been making music ever since. He can play every instrument in the average orchestra, except the piano, sings in five languages, and is" well known as a composer and conductor, From 1949 to 1952 he was musical director at a London cinema _ which presented Cine Variety. "We did four shows a day and put om a new programme every three weeks,’ George says. "In between times I wrote

music for the shows and composed rtine ballets." During this hectic period of musical activity he had three nervous collapses, but looking back on it he sees it was a very worth-while three years. Nowadays George is famous for his programmes of Music in the Melachrino Manner, and his orchestra is also a popular recording group in the United States. "We record a lot of what the Americans call ‘mood music," he says, "That is, music designed to induce a specific mood. So we have ‘Music for Faith and Inner Calm,’ ‘Music for Sleep,’ ‘Music for Study,’ and so on. They tell me the records do, in fact, produce the desired effect." a Fy

LIEDER SINGER

nn UBLIC recitals were difficult for a singer in Holland during the German occupation, but Elisabeth Maas

frequently appeared on the platform in concerts whose proceeds were donated to the underground resistance movement. Elisabeth ‘Maas recently emigrated to New Zealand, and she will be heard from

2XN at 9.4 p.m. on Thursday, November 4, in a recital of lieder and art songs with

Kathleen Anderson (pianist). She told us that the last recital she gave in Holland for the underground was interrupted by S.S. troops and Gestapo armed with tommy guns, although they had the courtesy to wait until the Ger-man-sung Schubert song came to an end, Since her arrival in this country Mrs. Maas has put most of her time and energy into farming and poultry-keeping, but she has broadcast before from Station 2XN. She is also on the staff of the School. of Music at Nelson. She has studied singing since she was 18, with Madame Maartije Offers of the Scala Milano, with Joseph Reed, of Cambridge, with Madame Perleberg, of Amsterdam, and at the Rotterdam Conservatoire with William Ravelli. 2 *« :

SHE’S AN ACTRESS

\W HEN you’ve made "dozens of films" with such stars in the film firmament as Alastair Sim, Anna Neagle, Will Hay, Edward Everett Horton, John Mills, Jack Hawkins, Margaret Ruther-

ford, Ida Lupino and Glynis Johns-then a bright career in New Zea-

land radio may seem rather dim by comparison, But-*not at all," says Davina Whitehouse, of Wellington. "Radio work here is wonderfully

satisfying, because you're not ‘typed.’ One day I may be a feather-headed matron, the next a worldly-wise, sophisticated woman, whereas in the theatre and films in England you've got to find your line and stick to it. Consequently I played adenoidal maids as my specialty." Davina Whitehouse made her first appearance at the Prince of Wales Theatre with Ivor Novello in J Lived With You, which was afterwards filmed, The film role led to a long-term contract with Twickenham Film Studios for her, and later she was under contract to the celebrated producer Herbert Wilcox. On the London stage she also appeared in FranRa Thompson, by Esther McCracken, and at the Comedy Theatre in The Blue Goose. The Comedy Theatre, like the Windmill, never closed even through the worst of the air raids. Instead, audiences

were warned of the raid-and most preferred to stay. The feeling of response, Mrs. Whitehouse says, was wonderfully heightened by the danger that audience and actors shared. On television she played in a very successful series called The Course of Justice. The day before The Listener talked to Mrs. Whitehous¢ she and her husband

had been to see the film The Long, Long Trailer, "as a sort of anniversary celebration," because almost exactly two years ago the Whitehouses arrived in New Zealand with their two sons and lived for a while in a caravan. That was before they found their present lovely home at Point Howard, Though she has travelled extensively in the United States and Canada, and "adores travelling,’ Mrs. Whitehouse says she is perfectly contented here. Wellington drama circles are perfectly content to have her, too, as she was a great success in two recent productions-as Mrs. Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer, and as Miss Whitchurch (see photograph at left) in The Happiest Days of Your Life, a role she repeats in the NZBS radio adaptation described on page 21 of this issue.

JAZZ QUARTET

JHEN Lionel Hampton made his triumphant return to the jazz world in the Lionel Hampton Quartet, the cheers were loud and long. "Here at last.’ said one writer, "was the old

Hampton, the great improviser, the tremendous swinger, the warm and Ivric

ballad interpreter, who had been buried in big band cacophony for years."

In selections by the Quartet currently being heard from YA stations, Hampton, inspired by a new rhythm group comprising Oscar Peterson (piano), Buddy Rich (drums) and Ray Brown (bass), has let himself go in a way he has seldom done before. The tunes include "Stomping at the Savoy," "The Nearness of You,’ and "Air Mail Special." Hampton was born in 1915 in Louisville, Kentucky, and educated in Chicago and at the University of Southern California. He joined Les Hite’s Orchestra as a drummer but switched to vibraphones on the advice of Louis Armstrong. Next came four years with Benny Goodman, followed by the formation of his own band. In 1953 he made a European tour, and according to Down Beat he was to visit Europe again this year.

ROUGH GOING

* (COLIN WILLS has travelled to many out-of-the-way places for the BBC in his series of "Window" programmesWindow on the Sudan, Window on the Caribbean, and Window on the Cameroons are the titles of only three of them. The last-named of these pro-

grammes, broadcast last week from 2YC, provided him with what he called

afterwards "quite an experience." He made a journey of many hundreds of miles through this mysterious region of Africa, taking with him recording equipment to try and build up a radio picture of the country and the way it is developing. "I travelled for | weeks over some of the worst roads in West Africa, in the unbelievable conditions of the wet season," he said. "But tough as those road journeys were, they were not as rough as a sea-trip I made along the coast in a launch when even the African boatswain, trained in the splendid traditions of the Nigerian marine, turned to me at one stage and said, ‘Master, it is too rough!’ What with seas like that, and roads like that, travelling in the Cameroons was quite an experience."

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