Toe the Line

Radio Record, Volume VIII, Issue 31, 8 February 1935, Page 15

Toe the Line

sung in all the principal theatres in Italy, at the Covent Garden, Barcelona, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and France. ’ By now Mr. Cecil has a repertoire of 30 operas, some in French. He toured with the Halle Orchestra under Sir Hamilton Harty,.and sang two concerts at the Albert Hall. He came out to Australia to sing in operas broadcast from Sydney, and has made a sixmonths’ tour of Australia for the ‘Australian Broadcasting Commission. He has been heard in records from the New Zealand stations as the leading tenor in recorded operas with the La Scala. Company. Mr. Cecil starts a tour of the main stations on February 26 from 2YA. Since she was three and a half years old Mrs. Stansfeld Prior, daughter of Robert Sloman, Mus.Doc. Oxon., has made music her career. At the age of six she made her first public appearance playing a Bach gavotte, and after studying for four years at the Royal College of Music, London, where she gained her Associateship, she continued her training in Germany and at Vienna, where she met Brahms. Several years later she also studied under Tobias Matthay. In her early years she played concertos at the Crystal Palace and at Queen’s Hall, and was examiner at the Guildhall School of Music. For the last 13 years Mrs. Stansfeld Prior has lectured on musical appreciation at London County Council Literary Institutes, and has also given lectures for London University Extension. She has been specially associated with chamber music, and has played with many distinguished musicians. She is one of the few women to have been elected a member of the Royal Philharmonic Society. Her forthcoming visit will give her an opportunity of not only giving lecture-recitals over the air, but also including the principal schools in her list of visits, for part of her life-work has been the interpretation of music from an educational point of view. Mrs. Stansfeld Prior’s tour of the main stations begins on Friday, February 22, at 1YA. It is scarcely a moot point whether the importation of artists from overseas should be encouraged, for notwithstanding listeners’ expressions of opinion to the contrary from time to time, there is an undoubted value in the scheme. Not that New Zealand cannot produce outstanding "aesthetic .merit-that has. been acknow-

ledged by the two Dominion artists mentioned above. This country is not thickly enough populated to expect a great return in numbers of really. first-class broadcast artists, sufficient of them, that is, to keep the programmes filled with original items instead of recordings. America and England have their millions

from whom to find their best, and even there the actual proportion of tip-top performers in any line of entertainment is not large. But it is obvious that even with a low average, per 10,000 population, of good artists, such a great number of inhabitants of a country must produce many who are really worth whiie. Furthermore, there is not the facility for higher training in New Zealand ' such as is provided abroad. In addition to this, the advent of ‘better known performers from over-. . seas is to some extent an inspiration to New Zealand artists to keep themselves from getting "stale." And no doubt the majority of, listeners would object if the board went back to the old order of things whereby _ only local talent was placed in front _.of the microphone,