Return Of Famous Musician Who Once Collected Antipodean Zoo

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 32, 20 January 1939, Page 4

Return Of Famous Musician Who Once Collected Antipodean Zoo

NLIKE most famous musicians and composers, Sir Granyile Bantock, ML.A., D.Mus., F.R.C.M., does not wear his hair jong. Neither is. he affected by. ‘‘temperament.’’ This charming old gentleman, with gyrey-white hair, white goatee beard, who wore a felt hat turned down all around the brim, and smoked a. pipe -as he chatted to the ‘‘Record"’ reporter, would easily pass for a sheep farmer, On his way back to London, via America, after spending two months in Australia under contract to the ABC, the eminent English composer

and chairman of the Corporation of Trinity College of Music, London, ealled at Auckland last week on the liner Monterey. He had the highest praise for the Australian singers and rausicians, In Australia they had finer choruses than in Britain, good soloists, and the best orchestra outside Europe and America, "As for tone, rhythm and diction, the singing in Australia is superior to what we have today in England," he added. "ZI found no trace of the so-called colonial ‘twang’."

. The noted composer regretted that time would not permit him to stay longer in New Zealand. His only previous visit here was oer 40 years ago, as conductor of a Gaiety Theatre company. That was in 1894, when Gearge Edwardes, of musical comedy fame, sent a2 company round the world to play two or three pieces, incliding "The Gaiety Girl." Hdwardes engaged a young man of 26 te ednduct, by name Granville Bantock. _ His inborn love of collecting curiosities and of animals was bound to assert itself, an@ Bantock errived home with a wonderful assortment of beasts and other proper tee bo various kinds. . ‘When in Melbourne he scared everyone out of the hotel lounge by appearing with what tooked like one of Australia’s deadliest snakes wound round his arm. [t was one he had bought in Sydney, where an almost identical species is non-poisonous. He brought back, too, like the traditional sailor, a parrot. There was also an opossum and an Australian bear. His most beloved acquisition was Nancy, an ape which he bought in Sydney. Nancy used to walk the streets of Melbourne with , him, holding his hand like a child. She would gambol in the tree-tops in the Botanical Gardens, but always returned at his whistle. One day Naney escaped from SBantock’s room in the hotel and found .her way into the pantry, where she enjoyed herself throwing down various articles of crockery-an amusement that proved costly to her. new master. Nancy’s stay in Bantock’s English. home was curtailed when one day she invented a new game of swinging on the chandelier-she was found headquarters at the zoo. When Nancy’s master re-visited Australia last week he entered the Commonwealth as Sir Granville Bantock, noted composer, adjudicator, ‘conductor and examiner, chairman of the Corporation of Trinity College of Music, Lonéon, and a brilliant musical figure in England.