PERSONALITIES of the WEEK

Radio Record, Volume X, Issue 5, 14 August 1936, Page 10

PERSONALITIES of the WEEK

Jasper’s Start N the strength of a favourable press notice on his stage debut as an amateur in the title role of a village production of "Robin Hood,’ Jasper Maskelyne, acted on his father’s advice and took up the stage professionally. Under that marvellous parent Jasper worked to such purpose that he be came England’s premier magician, It

is one of his everlasting regrets that his gifted parent did not live to see his son appear at the 1932 Royal Command performance. From the little Essex village of Royden emerged one of the most interesting figures in British variety circles-he is a kind of missionary of magic and he has recorded a little act in which he shows those who care to take the trouble how to do conjuving tricks. On Monday, August 17, in the Music, Mirth and Melody session at 8YA, this novelty will be presented. Anti-Wagnerian? IN a letter to "The Times." Mr. George Sampson, of Hove, Sussex, asks: IT am curious to know why the piece of operatic sex-appeal called "Parsifal," written by the pure-minded composer of the Venus scene in "Tann-

hauser," the incest scene in "Die Walkure," the sex-surrender scene in "Siegfried," the bigamy scene in "Die Gotterdammerung," and the adultery scene in "Tristan," is presented to us in an opera house as a sPlemn and sacred rite, which we are forbidden to applaud ' -supposing that We wished to applaud‘ any of it. There is a funny side, in seeing serried ranks of reputable men and women all in evening dress, all in solemn silence, and all alert with a shocked ssh! for any ignorant individual who, thinking himself at an "entertainment," starts to applaud, Before their respective wireless sets 4YA listeners will hear "Tristan" on Sunday, August 16, Organist-Conductor AROLD RAMSAY, cinema organist, . hag made a name for himself as conductor of his own Rhythm Symphony, and’ as a composer of quite 4a number of popular songs. Seven years as a church and concert organist, five years in Broadway’s most famous cin- . emas, organ lessons from a distinguished master, the late Lynwood Farnam, frequent playing in concerts with such orchestras as the New York Symphony Orchestra and that of the Metropolitan Opera House, orchestral scoring for such films as "The Ten Commandments," "Siegfried," "Covered Wagon," and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" -few organists can lay claim to such varied experience as has fallen to the lot of Harold Ramsay,.of the Granada Cinema, Tooting. Harold Ramsay's Rhythm Symphony will be heard by 1YA listeners on Wednesday, August 18, Regimental Relics . OYA listeners will hear the pipers of thé 1st. Battalion Scots Guards on Friday, August 21. This famous regiment has behind it 300 years of comradeship and duty-three centuries of British history. More than £100,000 worth of relics, coiinected directly or indirectly with the Scots Guards, were once assembled under one roof for purposes of exhibition. Not the least interesting exhibits were some intimate souvenirs of the Great War. Among them was a Hymn of Hate, handed to Col. E. C. T. Warner by a German, and a little Christmas tree given by a German to a Scots Guards corporal in "Noman’s land" at Neuve Chapelle on Christmas Day, 1915. These are treasured relics, especially the faded little Christmas tree, with its suspicion of tinsel which once glistened. As the story goes, on the initiative of the Germans in the trenches only 50 yards away, there emerged a gesture which displayed a very human side to the grim business of war.