PERSONALITIES of the WEEK

Radio Record, Volume X, Issue 3, 24 July 1936, Page 10

PERSONALITIES of the WEEK

Ecstatic Critics (CHICAGO critics indulged in many rhapsodies on Muriel Brunskill’s appearance in the city of the lakes. Of the great contralto the "Herald and Examiner" said: "One of the greatest voices of the generation. One__ recalled _Schumann-Heink in her prime or Clara Butt. But this later visitor from England can afford, can even invite, such comparison. Else _ there would be no standards by which to measure her art... . . Interpretatively, Miss Brunskill belongs to the aristocrats of the art. She phrases like a fine instrumentalist." The "Daily Tribune’ went one better. "Muriel Brunskill’s voice, a Stradivarius larynx , , . it runs all the way from the faintest caress of a tone to a jubilant peal, yet with never a strident note in it." 2YA listeners will hear Muriel Brunskill on Wednesday, July 29, t Loves Teaching . NLIKE many musicians, Elsa Alsen, the prima donna, loves teaching. "IT would like nothing better," she once said, "than to have an opportunity to direct the stage deportment of young artists. I have had much experience -I have sung al] of the Italian operas as well as nearly all the Wagnerian roles over and over again, some of them, like Isolde, as many as seventy or eighty times, and I would like to put all this routine to the service of American operatic progress, I do wish someone would take up this plan of mine of starting a Guild Opera like the Guild Theatre (the American equivalent of New Zealand’s repertory movement), America has hundreds of cities as large as those in Germany that have first-rate opera. And America has plenty of optimists who go ahead and do things." Hisa Alsen sings On 38YA’s programme on Monday, July: 27, Lambert on Diaghilev "Rio GRANDE," by Constant Lambert, is scheduled for performance at 4YA on Thursday, July 30, under the baton of the composer, This vivid personality in modern music said in a recent interview: "Like most of Diaghilev'’s collaborators, I quarrelled With him; but, like most of them, I

made it up again. In the last year _ Of his life he was the first person to produce my ‘Musie for Orchestra,’ and also my arrangement of eighteenth cen: tury music. He had an astonishingly wide. knowledge. of music of all periods. As a man he was an extraordinary mixture. Sometimes absolutely assured, sometimes bewildered and tentative. but always the oriental despot in his behaviour. In his lifetime he was over-praised, but now, I think, he is being under-estimat Tea With Crippen DESCENDANT of that tough family-the Squires of Devon-J. H. Squire has had a goodly amount of rough with the smooth. His early experiences in battling round the world before the mast, shining shoes in New York, joining the navy, going to Ladysmith and through the Boxer Rising in China, with the boys in blue, réad ‘like a romance. In 1906 he purchased his discharge and returned to London. "Nobody knew me or wahted to know me," said Mr. Squire. He played in restaurants and theatre orchestras, earning a living as best he could. New York saw him again. This time he didn’t black shoes, but worked for a firm of music publishers. Returning to London to open Offices for the same firm in Albion House, New Oxford Street, he often took tea with a nice quiet little man who occupied another office. It was Dr. Crippen! Listeners will hear the J, H. Squiré Celeste Octet on Tuesday, July 28, from 2YA in the dinner music session. Commanding Personality RUNO WALTER, the famous conductor, is one of the distinguished people whom the Stern Conservatorium is proud to claim as former students. He lost no time, after leaving it, in finding his true place, and rose rapidly, mounting more steps in.the operatic ladder on the way, to the post of eonductor of the Roya} Opera, Berlin; he was then only 24. Some 18 years later, he succeeded Mottl as director at Munich, and there his tireless energy and organising abilities had fuller scope. The high standard of the festival performances there is largely the result of his enterprise. He is, besides, a brilliant planist and composer; from 3YA on Wednesday, July 29.