Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1049, 2 October 1959, Page 16

Open Microphone

NEWS OF PEOPLE AND PROGRAMMES

LONDON BOUND

y HEN we had news of Vivienne F. Leslie, the Dunedin pianist _and composer, recently, she was expecting to leave for London during September to study composition under Matyas Seiber. A Mus. Bach. graduate with Honours and an L.R.S.M. in pianoforte, Miss Leslie goes overseas as this year’s Fanny Evans Travelling Scholar in music. In recent years Miss Leslie (whose picture is shown above) has had a good

deal of success at competitions festivals and has given recitals on the municipal

organ. As a broadcaster, her piano recitals from 4YC have attracted attention because of the insight they have shown into modern works. But she does not confine herself to the moderns -Bach, for example, is another whose works she has interpreted. Her compositions show that she has considerable range. Among them are a string quartet, a suite for chamber orchestra, a set of fugues for wind trio, a wind quintet, several songs and piano compositions. Miss Leslie has not confined her studies to music, for she is also an advanced student of philosophy, in which she was awarded the James Clark Prize at Otago University last year; and she is a competent debater and public speaker.

SETTLING DOWN

* EMEMBERED with’ gratitude for his work for music in New Zealand during his stay of about nine years here, the violinist Maurice Clare seems to be settling down in Sydney. For the past five years he has been inclined to regard it as his headquarters between tours of the Far East, Europe and New Zealand, and now he has taken two flats there-one for living in and one for teaching. Apparently he is pleased to be giving up the gipsy life and he says he may not even go to Japan in 1961 as he had intended. Maurice Clare won’t be giving up concert work, though. Among other things he

would like to play the Bach violin solos and to conduct the Brandenburg concertos. "It’s a great pity these lovely. works are so seldom vper-

formed here," he ‘said in Sydney recently. ABC plans

for next year, announced only a week or two ago, include appearances by Maurice Clare at youth concerts in Brisbane. » Mr Clare’s teaching plans go beyond lessons for single pupils to groups of musicians; and, as leading players do at their summer schools in other parts of the world, he will not only teach music but talk about it. His pupils may not all be string players. Maurice Clare’s recent activities include compering musical programmes on ABC television. > : *

RESOURCEFUL

\V HEN Bob Loughnan, of the Canterbury Ski Association, and Robin Walker, an NZBS technician, recorded commentaries and impressions at the South Island Ski Championships at Craigieburn Valley, Canterbury, recently, they had to carry a portable recorder and accessories by moonlight for

two and a half hours over the = five-mile

track to Craigieburn "village," and for the next two days manpack it for another hour and a half through the snow to a point overlooking the slalom course. On the second day a sou’wester brought swirling snow and the recorder was wrapped in a pack and put in a hole in the snow while commentator and technician sheltered under a big overhanging rock. Listeners who wondered how results were received so quickly from the isolated Craigieburn course will be interested to know that on both days they were flown out by pigeons owned by Mr Loughnan’s 10-year-old son, David. In the picture of Mr Loughnan below, taken during the commentary on the giant slalom, the microphone is covered by a windshield designed and made in the Christchurch workshops of the NZBS.