Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 946, 27 September 1957, Page 20

Open Microphone

MANY listeners who heard two works by Eva Christeller from 2YC recently will remember the composer as a member of the National Orchestra in its early years, and as a member of the 3YA Orchestra. Others knew her as an art student in Auckland and Christchurch. Now livVIOLINIST- ing in Scheveningen, COMPOSER the seaside suburb of The Hague, Eva Christeller is married to a Dutch doctor who is also a fine amateur musician. Looking after the household and her little daughter Saskia-with whom she is seen at the top of this column-leave her little time for composing, but she still often plays in the Residentie Orchestra, of which she was formerly a member, and she has pupils and plays a good deal of chamber music. Recently she wrote a sonata for two violins which the two>leaders of the Orchestra have accepted for their concert programme. Born in Germany, Eva Christeller went to Switzerland and Italy for her education. She studied the violin with Professor Tagliacozzo, a teacher at the Conservatorium in Rome, but later when she came to New Zealand she wanted to make painting her career. That was when she studied at the Art Schools at Auckland and Christchurch.

Then she had the good fortune to take lessons from the violinist Maurice Clare, which prepared her for her L.R.S.M., and she also studied music at Canterbury University College under Dr Vernon Griffiths and Frederick Page, who both encouraged her first efforts in composition. She joined the 3YA Orchestra and played in it for several years, and after a successful recital in Wellington was asked by Vincent Aspey to join his , broadcasting ‘ quartet. Later she became a member of the National Orchestra. Eva. Christeller has been abroad since she left for England 10 years ago to study under Max Rostal. Her Sonatina for Violin and Cello, one of the compositions heard in the recent broadcast, was written during this period. A five weeks’ summer course in Paris under the famous violinist and composer Georges

Enesco led to Enesco’s offering her a two years’ scholarship at the Ecole Normale, and helped by another bursary from the New Zealand Government she was able to accept this. After studying with Yvonne Astruc, she took her "licence de concert," then before joining the Residentie Orchestra in The Hague, studied composition with Arthur Honegger and Milhaud, and joined a course for young musicians under Hindemith in Salzburg. There the Suite for Flute and Violin, also heard in the recent broadcast, waswritten. *. OR Eric Handbury and John Risher, whose songs are represented in New Zealanders Wrote These, songwriting is very much a co-operative affair. The lyrics and the basic melody are composed by Eric Handbury, and then worked on by CO-OPERATIVE both partners until the structure of the song satisfies them. John Fisher makes the final arrangement. Between them Mr Handbury and Mr Fisher have written a number of songs which have already been heard from 4YA and have achieved, as they modestly put it, "a small success" with local dance bands. Born in Sheffield, England, Mr Handbury came to New Zealand nine years ago and is now Public Relations Officer for New Plymouth. John Fisher was born in Dunedin, where he still lives and works as a butcher. Both are in their middle thirties, and both are married with two children. * FOR the American pianist Barbara Scott, New Zealand is the first stop on a working holiday which*she hopes will take her around the world. She arrived in Auckland last Easter, and besides her normal job has for. the past three months been playing dinner music at an Auckland restaurant. Now Miss Scott has a solo spot called Serenades of the Kevboard in the Wed.

nesday night National programme. She has also broadcast as guest artist with the Bart Stokes Orchestra and in the first Variety Round-up programme. Barbara Scott is a naturalis§d American who was born and brought up in Scotland. As a child she was taught dancing-tap, ballet and FIRST STOP Highland. Her first musical instrument was the accordion, but at 15 she was playing the piano professionally. Later she played with dance bands and in hotels. Nine years ago Miss Scott went to New York, where she had relatives; and she lived there for six years. By day she worked as a secretary, at night as a pianist. She entertained hospital patients for the Red Cross, assisted at a song and dance studio, appeared on television children’s shows and played for radio and television commercials. "It was not very glamorous," she says, "and it was. all hard work." Before coming to New Zealand Barbara Scott spent two years in San

Francisco. Now she is planning to visit Australia, where her own style of sophisticated jazz should be as popular as it is here. FOR the violinist Ronald Woodcock the coming summer in Australia will be the first he has seen for a couple of years, not counting several stops in the tropics on his way back from Europe last April. He had taken, he told us, a French boat to Trinidad. and gave a series of recitals ROVING there, as well as in the AUSTRALIAN Barbadoes and St Vincent. The main competition for a _ fiddler, especially in Trinidad, was calypso. "Everywhere I went people said: ‘Have you heard our calypso? Have you heard our steel bands?’ In Port of Spain the people are very strongly nationalistic, and because of this they boost their national music on every occasion possible." One of the purposes of the trip to Europe had been to take a further course of study with his teacher, Pablo Casals, at Prades, in the South of France. Speaking of Casals’s recent marriage, Mr Woodcock said he had first met Martita Casals in 1955 when they were fellow students. Like all the other

‘NEWS OF BROADCASTERS ON AND OFF THE RECORD

pupils except himself, she was a cellist. "She is.a Puerto Rican. Though her name is Martita, we all called her Martha. Since she has taken care of Casals he has been free of all the mundane distractions which even for a man of his colossal energy can be timeconsuming." Mr Woodcock said that to anyone who knew them both it was easy to see why Martita and Casals had

married. They had a natural affinity. Not only did Mar- . tita speak Spanish, she also came from the place where Casals’s mother was .- born. "Then, being a musician, she could see_ the genius that all his pupils saw in Casals, And he is not only a genius, remember, but also a very human _person." Last year at Prades on Mar--tita’s birthday the students had bought her a_cha-cha-cha record as a present and took it over to Casals’s house where the party was being held. She was delighted, Mr Woodcock recalls, and

even Casals sat back with his pipe between his teeth and repeated throughout the recording: "Bien fait, bien fait" (well done). Just before last Christmas Mr Woodcock left Prades for London, where he did some work for the BBC. On that trip he also broadcast in France and Holland, and before he left he was on the air in Eire. Now visiting his home in Australia for the first time in five years, Mr Woodcock will be off again towards the end of the year, this time on a tour which will include Sarawak, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Kenya, Uganda, and possibly South Africa. In August next year he hopes to return to have another look at New Zealand. * IM BOSWELL, 1YA-1YC _ talks officer, left Auckland recently with Mrs Boswell for Los Angeles. There he will study broadcasting and television under a scholarNEW TALKS ship awarded by the OFFICER University of Southern California. The NZBS’ has granted Mr Boswell a year’s leave of absence and, while he is away, Don MacGregor, a senior announcer at 1YA, is acting talks officer. Don MacGregor’s voice is well known to northern listeners. He joined the NZBS in 1942 as an announcer at 1ZB, transferring to 1YA and 1YC three years later. He is the originator of the programme Arts Review. broad-

cast by 1YC, which looks forward to coming events in the fields of music, drama and the visual atts. Mr MacGregor’s chief interest outside broadcasting is drama, and he has acted in many plays produced in Auckland by the Grafton and Repertory Theatres. For many years Mr MacGregor was chairman of the Grafton Theatre. *

SATEEN years ago. Jack Urlwin’s early resolution never to. get married began to falter a little, and at the same time he burst into song with his first composition. Significantly, it was called "A Girl Like You." The retreat continued and _ he ended up marrying the girl who had started it. He also went on _ writing songs and __ altogether has produced 20 or so. A modern waltz, "One Week of Heaven," has been recorded, a Hawaiian number, "Heavenly Isle," will be re- _ leased soon, and

now Mr Uriwin has contributed to New Zealanders Wrote These. "T’ve been interested in music since I was about 10, when I had an unsuccessful encounter with a steel guitarwithout a teacher, however," Jack Urlwin tells us. "I really went overboard for music when I was HE CAN'T introduced to jazz durHELP IT ing the last. war. I taught myself to read music during long, lonely evenings on a farm during the University vacation, and during the war years I also had my first encounter with a clarinet, which I have blown into from time to time for the past 10 years." Mr Urlwin does not consider himself a successful clarinettist, but the. drums seem to have been a different matter. He began to play these-‘with a teacher at last"around the time he wrote his first song, and has played them ever since, For several years he played with various bands and he has an especially warm memory of a group led by Ken Avery. Nowadays he plays the drums just for the "kicks." Mr Urlwin usually writes a song because he wants to express a feeling or a mood which the songs he knows already don’t quite fit. He likes, to compose-feels, in fact, that he can’t help himself. "Music to me is almost a panacea," he says. "I like especially Dave Brubeck and Benny Goodman, Kathleen Long playing Scarlatti and’ the work of Cole Porter."