Here and There

Radio Record, Volume VI, Issue 51, 30 June 1933, Page 42

Here and There

Selections from this W eek’ Programmes

By

TRIPLE GRID

NCLUDED among the recorded artists in Will) MicKeon’s next bright show at 2YA on July 6 is Maggie Teyte, who has held the affection of Hnglish and American audiences for more than a quarter of a century. The writer had the good fortune to be present at her English debut at Queen’s Hall, when a qritical audience immediately acclaimed her triumph and predicted a successful future. Miss Teyte was then 19 years old and a year before

had created a sensation in Paris as Melisande.in Debussy’s opera. When 15 years of age she left her Wolverhampton -home to study under the great Jean de Reske, and ever since has marched from one triumph to another, in opera and concert work, in both England and America. S s 8 REMARKABLE French poet, novelist and child prodigy, Victor Hugo has few rivals in his own country. In 1828, when 26 years old, he published several works in which his anti-classical tendency in style and treatment of subject were plainly visible. His drama "Cromwell," with its celebrated preface, followed, and this work threw down the gauntlet to the Romantic school. Hugo’s poetry of this period has a melody and grace superior to anything he subsequently wrote, although there is a lack of that deep and original sense of life which characterises his later poems. During this period his critical essays, especially upon Mirabeau and Voltaire, attracted very wide attention. The revolution of 1848 threw him into the thick of the struggle, firstly as a conservative and later, possibly out of suspicion for Napoleon’s designs, as a relentless leader of the Democrats, 2 i] 2 FTER the coup d’etat of 1851 Hugo still pursued by publications in Brussels the founder of the Second Em-pire-"Napoleon je Petit." A wonderful mixture of satirical invective, lyrical passion and pathos flowed. from his pen. Exiled, he went to live in Jersey, but in 1855 he was expelled witb the rest of the French emigres. Finally he found sanctuary in Guernsey, and it was here in comparative quiet and solitude he wrote most of his great works, After the fall of the Empire, Hugo returned to Paris, where he spent the remaining years of a remarkably vigorous old age in occasional visits to the Senate and in adding to an already long list of literary works. We know him chiefly by translations of his popular writings, and the talk by Mr. A. H. Williams on July 6 from 4YA promises information and entertainment, for Victor Hugo is still a favourite with the reading public. HERE is a possible justification for a little speculation as to the case Mr. Karl Atkinson will make out for "Uncle Sam’s Music" at 2YA on Tuesday next-the glorious fourth, by the way. Owen Wister, American novelist,

and a@ man whose whole attention was at one stage focussed upon becoming a professional musician and cumposer, once said some illuminating things about certain aspects of Amer ica’s advance in the musical art, among them the following: "In the field of composition America unquestionably suffered from the Puritan pall which shrouded so much of our early creative work. The English have never been a profound .musical race; and at that time, some fifty years after the landing at Plymouth Rock, when England was revelling in the beautiful music of Purcell, our blue-nosed Pilgrim and Quake: forefathers were finding in music the double-distilled quintessence of fire and brimstone. It is difficult to estimate the damage done to music by the Puri: tan commonwealth. The genius of Pur. cell was one in which the British peo-

ple have reason to glory. Unfortunately, they were in a poor ‘position to promote it; and when the overwhelming genius of Handel arrived, the native composer was neglected-a misfortune for which Britons even to-day are trying to atone." [NCLUDED in the "Music and Songs of Yesterday," scheduled for presentation at 8YA next week, is that evergreen favourite of this and earlier generations, "Silver Threads Among

the Gold." In the early years of last century the Americans were literally our cousins, and no Wnglish-speaking union was needed to cement a friendship between the two nations. In those days American songs were our sungs, and when Hart P. Danks, of Newhaven, wrote his most popular song, it was as much English as it was American. As a boy Danks sang in many leading churches in America, and continued to identify himself with church choirs again after his voice broke. While attached to a Chicago church he began to write hymn tunes and popular songs, the latter having a very wide circulation. Anthems and opera came from his pen, and in all he left some 1200 compositions. Subsequently Danks became musical director of several of the leading churches of New York, and his death at 69 in 1903 removed one who was loved on both sides of the Atlantic, % * a qT the galaxy of superb artists that has been New Uealand’s good fortune to admire during the last two or three years there is no gainsaying the fact that one most favourably remembered is Lina Paliughi, who toured with the Williamson-Imperial Grand Opera Company. The appearance of a new star in the lyric firmament always holds the attention of concert and opera patrons, and Paliughi’s advent here is something that will re. main in memory for ever. A very young Italian-American coloratura soprano, her work created a furore in the Italian opera. With but three years’ stage experience her suecess has been achieved with meteoric rapidity, and wherever she has sung her audiences have been amazed at the beauty of her art. Auckland listeners will be favoured by a renewal of her acquaintance by tuning to 1YA on July 4, when she will be heard in a recorded version of the "Mad Scene, from Lucia di Lammermoor," —