CATHEDRAL’S PART IN ARTS FESTIVAL

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30634, 28 December 1964, Page 10

CATHEDRAL’S PART IN ARTS FESTIVAL

Christchurch Cathedral will play an important part in the Christchurch Pan-Pacific Arts Festival, which will begin on February 22. Events to be held there will not only be cultural but also sympathetic to the primary spiritual purpose of the Cathedral.

The first will be “Landfall in Unknown Seas,” played by the John Ritchie String Orchestra with Bernard Kearns as narrator, on February 23. The prominent New Zealand playwright-poet. Allen Curnow, was commissioned by Dr. J. C. Beaglehole, for the National Historical Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs, to write a poem to commemorate the tercentenary of Abel Tasman’s sighting the South Island’s west coast in 1642. New Zealand composer, Douglas Lilburn, read Mr Curnow’s poem before a year was over.

Of him, Mr Curnow says: “. . . Douglas Liburn, whose understanding of my purposes and feelings in the poem was, I realise, one of those rare and happy occurrences between composer and author, had . . . written his beautiful music for strings. “Without the music or (as I would always prefer) with it. the poem has been performed many times since the tercentennial of 1942, and broadcast both in New Zealand and by the 8.8. C. “Written on request for an

occasion it has lasted better than some of my other lyrics of that time, in which I had nobody but myself to satisfy.” The performance of this work is a significant adjunct to the festival. On Wednesday, February 24, choral evensong will be preceded by a half-hour organ recital at 5.15 p.m. On Thursday, February 25, Schubert’s Mass in G Major will be presented by the Christchurch Cathedral Choir at 1.10 p.m. At 4.30 p.m. on that day choral evensong will again be preceded by an organ recital. On Monday, March 1. New Zealand’s outstanding theatre producer, Miss Ngaio Marsh, will give a lecture on theatre in New Zealand and Australia. This will be at 1.10 p.m. The next day, also at 1.10 ;P.m.. the Repertory Society’s producer (Mr John Kim) will read New Zealand verse. At 15.15 p.m. the same day choral evensong will be preceded again by an organ recital. The final event in Christchurch Cathedral will be on Thursday, March 4, two days before -the-festival ends. It will be a progra'mme-at--LlO p.m. by the University of Canterbury Madrigal Singers, whose fame has spread throughout New Zealand and from whom work has been | commissioned by the 8.8. C. That evening at 4.30 o’clock, ; choral evensong will be preceded by the final festival organ recital.