Radio: Christmas Fare

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30630, 22 December 1964, Page 9

Radio: Christmas Fare

This week the air is filled with Christmas fare. Each station has several kinds of seasonal offerings in its programme. As most of these programmes are staggered, it is almost possible to fill the entire evening with Christmas music my switching stations. One could start this evening by tuning to 3YC at 5.45 to hear the sumptuousvoiced American soprano, Leontyne Price, singing carols. At 7, 3YC will broadcast a fine English work that deserves to be better known, Vaughan William’s Fantasia on Christmas Carols. The baritone soloist will be Hervey Alan, with the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge.

At 7.30 the YA link will broadcast a round-up of preChristmas activities in the Dominion. At 8 3YD offers a half-hour of Christmas melodies and at 8.30 the Oswald Cheesman Singalong Group will be heard in favourite carols from the YA link. The Cheesman singers have become familiar to TV viewers and next year the group plans a New Zealand tour as well as an entry into the recording field—Kiwi Records purchased some tapes of the group from the N.Z.B.C. At 10.30 the Ambrosian Singers and the Orpington Junior Singers will be heard from 3YC in a Christmas music programme. This includes a cantata, “Furehtet

euch nicht,” by a seven-teenth-century German composer, Bernhard, based on the words of the angel to the Virgin Mary, “Fear not, Mary, for thou has found favour with God”; the Pastoral Cantata on the birth of Christ by Alessandro Scarlatti in which the angel tells the shepherds to bring their pipes with them to the manger; an unaccompanied Christmas motet by a fifteenth-century French composer Mouton; and a Spanish carol, “Riu, riu, chiu.” “The Infant Christ”

On Christmas Eve 3YC will broadcast a performance of a beautiful and moving work by Berlioz, the oratorio “L’Enfance du Christ.” This work was produced at the age of 51 and was even welcomed by the Paris critics who were normally hostile to Berlioz. “Of all his major works it is the one that invites the least number of qualifying considerations.” “The Times” music critic said recently. “Its span of inspiration is long and sustained and it discloses an aspect of the composer which is not conspicuous in his other largescale works—delicacy, tenderness and intimacy matched by instrumental colours which are as the mild, gentle light refracted by stainedglass windows.” The work is in three parts. The first, “Herod’s Dream,” shows Herod ordering the slaughter of the new-born infants; the second is the “Flight into Egypt,” and the third is the “Arrival at Sais” where the Holy Family is welcomed by friendly Ishmaelites.

The performance, recorded at the Edinburgh Festival, with April Cantelo (s), Alexander Young (t), Thomas Hemsley (b), and Joseph Rouleau (bs), and the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, is conducted by Colin Davis who has established himself as the successor to Sir Thomas Beecham as the chief British interpreter of Berlioz.

“The Infant Christ,” incidentally, is one of the works which the Harmonic Society will sing later next year.

“Pacem In Terris”

The French composer, Darius Milhaud, has set the last encyclical of Pope John, “Pacem in Terris,” to music in the form of a choral symphony. The work was commissioned by the French Radio for performance at the inauguration of the new Broadcasting House in Paris. It is the first time an encyclical has been set to music and it was done with Vatican approval. The symphony which is sung from beginning

to end, opens with a call for peace on earth and ends with a plea to the Saviour to enlighten those presiding over destinies of peoples to allow all to live in peace. A recording made at the premiere will be broadcast from 3YC on Wednesday evening. The soloists are Johanna Peters (c) and Louis Quilico (b), and the French National Radio Orchestra and Chorus is conducted by Charles Munch. Oistrakh As Violist Sometimes orchestral works with important viola parts turn up with a leading violinist as violist. Some string players find playing violin and viola incompatible because of differences in the left-hand finger extension. Others play both to enhance their string tone. The latest violinist turned violist is David Oistrakh who, with his son Igor playing the violin and the Moscow Philharmonic under Kyril Kondrashin, will be heard in a movement from Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola in Sunday afternoon’s “Introducing New Records” from the YA link. The programme will also include an excerpt from “Swan Lake” played by the Boston Pops under Arthur Fiedler, and the Spanish soprano, Consuelo Rubio, singing the heroine’s defiant call to the divinities of the Styx from Gluck’s French version of his original Italian opera “Alceste.” Medieval Play One of the attractions of the arts festival in Christchurch next year will be the presentation of the York cycle of mystery plays. On Friday listeners to 3YC will be able to hear a play from a lesser-known medieval cycle, “A Nativity for NTown,” from the Lincoln cycle. The origin of this fifteenth-century series was in doubt for some time, and they were called the Hegge plays after a former owner of the manuscript, but it is now known that they were written in the East Midland dialect and were first performed in the cathedral city of Lincoln. The N-Town of the title derives from the presentation of the plays in different towns and the “N” was exchanged for the name of the town of the performance.

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