PERSONALITIES ON THE AIR

Radio Record, 15 July 1938, Page 16

PERSONALITIES ON THE AIR

669? N SEARCH OF NEW ZEALAND" might well be a title given to an interesting series of historical and other talks recorded for the NBS by Mr. Douglas Cresswell. He bids fair to do for New Zealand something of what H. V. Morton has done for Britain. A considerable amount of research and actual travelling has gone into his work to date. These talks are to be a Z2YA feature every Monday at 8.40 p.m. His next expedition will be to the not-too-far-north-the Bay of Islands, the "Cradle of New Zealand’s Constitutional History," where he will look into our country’s beginnings in general, and the development of the citrus fruit and passion fruit industries in particular. Those who know Mr. Creswell’s talks will look forward to a delightful "salad" as an outcome of his coming activities. ‘Discovering Our Country-The Apple Crop," is the subject of a recorded talk by Mr. Douglas Cresswell at 2YA on Monday, July 18, HE SERVED Up to the age of BEFORE twenty-six Frank THE MAST. Bullen, who served before the mast as a boy, followed the sea. It is not too much to say that no modern writer more enriched England’s sea literature than did the author of "The Cruise of the Cachalot." This author’s efforts to preserve many of our fine old sea shacties have been commended by vario. authorities, who regretted the passing of the old stamp-and-go of ten men on a rope. What so many of his contemporaries liked about Bullen was his inimitable rendering of these old shanties. Schoolboys especially will think the 3YA’s education session is looking up when they bear Mr. A. J. Campbell’s talk, "With Bullen on the Cachalat," on Wednesday afternoon, July 20. NEGROES AND ‘The banjo is the SONG humorist of the OF THE BANJO. string instruments and is the favourite Instrument among. the American hegroes and all negro. minstrels, whether they owe their colour to the sun or burnt cork, The negros brought the banjo from Africa, and we are to assume that it was smuggled aboard the slave ships to keep up their spirits. Tt has from five to nine strings which are plucked at a velocity and with a dexterity easier to watch than to imitate. In modern dance hands the banjo is indispensable for supplying a

colour effect without which jazz would be incomplete, Raymond and his Band o’ Banjos will be heard: in 1¥VA’s musie, mirth Sly 20 mony session on Wednesday, y 20

ANONA WINN {SAlthough born in ALWAYS Australia, ' Anona IN A HURRY. Winn has English parents, She intended becoming an opera singer. but her sense of humour proved too strong for her, and she went off the "straight" into revue, musical comedy, pauntomime, and variety, She sang in seventeen out of the twenty "Songs From the Shows" series of records which are So very popular with radio fans. Anona is always in a hurry, loves ice-cream, indulges in "hot" syncopation, has ‘written many successful song lyrics. She has fair hair and dark eyes and fascination, and has been warbling to good. purpose since she was five, her first semi-public "hit" being "Silver Threads Among the Gold," which she sang standing on a chair and dressed like granny. / Anona Winn, comedienne, will be heard in 4YA’a music, mirth and melody session on Tuesday, July 19. NOVELIST WHO This is the opinion INVENTED of Nathaniel HawTHE PILLAR BOX. thorne of the novels of Anthony Trollope: "Just as real as if some giant had hewn a lump out of the earth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants going about their daily business and not suspecting that they were being made a show of." Trollope had q prodigious output. Method was his god. Rising at 5.80 every morning, he wrote for exactly two and a half hours at. the rate of two hundred and fifty words every quarter of an hour, never more, never less. It seems incredible that the Barsetshire novels were written in this way. Trollope had the Civil Service mind. He was for many years a post office worker It is not generally remembered that he invented the pillar-box. At 4YA on Friday, July 22, Professor T. D. Adams will give readings from Anthony Trollope. BUTCHER’SSON Ahout the middle of FINDS last century a BoINSPIRATION. hemian inn-keeper. who was also the village butcher. made up his mind that his son should carry on his father’s business. But young Anton Dvorak had music in his blood, and was determined on another career. His early days were like those of the traditional comnposer: full of privation and hardship. He was 88 before his first composition, "The King and the Qollier,"~ was published. Tt was not a success, although it fared better afterwards when rewritten. His fame came three years later, when he wrote a patriotic hymn, which soon was sung throughout Bohemia (now Czechoslovakia). He was granted a pension from a fund for "young, poor and talented artists" and

he starved no more. As he grew older he became famous not only in Bohemia, but in the outside world, and his symphonie compositions were in great demand. On Sunday afternoon the London Philharmonic Orchestra will be heard from 4YA, playing Dvorak’s Slavonic Rhapsody. WOMAN WHO The English ’cellist, 1S FAMOUS Beatrice Harrison, ‘CELLIST. won a gold medal for playing when she was ten years old. She studied at the Royal College of Music, and afterwards went to Berlin and carried off the International Mendelssohn Prize. Miss Harrison has won'a foremost place among British ’cellists, and although her repertoire is extremely wide, covering music from the early Italian masters to Kodaly. whose unaccompanied *Cello Sonata she was the first to perform in England, she igs usually associated with Blgar’s ’Cello Concerto, and the ’cello music of Delius. Beatrice Harrison, ‘cellist, will be heard from 2YA on Thursday, July 21. CAREER OF Born at Odessa in A 1896, Simon Barer RUSSIAN PIANIST, began piano studies when he wag eleven. In 1911 he entered the Conservatoire at Petrograd, studying under Madame Essipov, and subsequently Blumenfeld. He completed his studies in 1919, winning the "Rubinstein Prize.’ He be came professor of piano at Kiey Conservatoire, and during this time made a concert tour of Russia, visiting all the principal towns, He then set about conquering successive European capitals, cities and towns, and finally arrived in Bngland in 19384. Simon Barer’s flexibility of touch and astonishing elasticity in staccato passages render his audiences spellbound. Listeners to 3YA will hear Simon Barer, pianist, on Sunday afternoon, July 17. ANNOUNCER The slow, measurFROM ed tones of Mr. F. STATION 3YA. DD. J. Crowle, M.A., of the 38YA_annouucing staff, must now take their place as making up the voice of one of the radio announcers best known to

New Zealand listeners. He ranks among the most experienced announeers in the country. When not at the microphone, Mr. Crowle plays golf, but,

for mental recreation, devotes a good deal of time to the Christchurch branch of the New Zealand Institate of Public Administration. Before he joined the service, in 1932, he had a brilliant scholastic career. In South Canterbury, he was keenly interested in debating and amateur dramatic work, and was, in 1930, a member of the winning team in the South Canterbury drama: competition. THE MAN One of the most WITHOUT famous exiles who A SKIN. have sought refuge in Wngland was Jean Jacques Rousseau, the man witiout a skin. The apt nick-name which Hume gave him does not mean that he had less than the usual amount of epidermis, It means that he was one of the most quarrelsome and fidgety men alive; harried by fearg that his

friends, as well as his enemies, were plotting against him; in fact, more than a little "touched." His life, when he was footman and when he was a fumous man of letters, was one long tale of vice, meanness, ingratitude, treachery and hypocrisy, yet the teliing of it in his "Confessions," has provided the world with a book which each succeeding generation hag read with delight-not for the matter but for the style of it. In 3¥A’s "Whirligig of Time" series of talks, Dr. H. BE. Field will speak on Rousseau on Wednesday, July 20. MUSICAL LINKS If ever the musical WITH associations of HanHANOVER. over come to be written up from the British viewpoint, not ,only shall we have occasion to be grateful to it for Handel, but also latterly for Gerhard Husch, most musical of baritones, who was born in that city in 1901. When Husch was 19, he begau to study with a well-known local teacher of singing, Professor Haus Ente, and made such rapid progress that by the autumn of 1920 he entered the Opera School of the Hanover State Conservatoire. In 1923 he began his operatic career at the State Theatre at Osnabruck. Listeners to 2YA will hear Gerhard Husch, baritone, on Tuesday, July 19. SMALL BOY Mischa H1lmanQ, IN violinist, at the age SAILOR SUIT. of twelve, went to London in 1905 and played at one of Mr. Charles Williams's orchestral concerts, for a fee of 120 guineas-the largest fee hitherto known for an instrumental performer's appearance in the metropolis. One writer has recalled "the 'extraordinary sensation occasioned by the sturdy little boy in the sailor suit when, after coming on the platform, grave and self-possessed, and making his stir? little bow, he attacked the opening phrases of the Tschaikovsky Concerto. "His head, as he stood, was on a level with that of the seated leader of the orchestra, his playing in every respect in tone, technique, artistic feeling, and most amazing of all, in intel-

lectual grasp, was that of a grown: man." Mischa Elman, violinist, will be heard in ivAs dinner session on Saturday, July 2