ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT Radio: Christmas Fare

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30940, 22 December 1965, Page 19

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT Radio: Christmas Fare

There is plenty of Christmas music in the air and on the air. It is iun« by pop singers and prima donnas, by famous rhoirs and by unknown groups, sometimes badly and sometimes well. Two Christmas carol selections more adventurous than most will be heard from 3YC tonight at 8.17 and on Saturday evening. The Elizabethan Singers under Louis Halsey sing carols mainly familiar in words, but with music either newly composed (by Walton, Flicker, Bennett, Davies and others) or freshly arranged (Gardner. Williamson. and others). It might surprise the harking angels, but should be interesting. Another Christmas programme will be sung by the Deller Consort at 5.42 tonight from 3YC. On Thursday there Will be a programme from the Wellington Choir of St. Mary of the Angels under Maxwell Fernie. On Christmas Eve 3YC will broadcast Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s “Midnight Mass for Christmas." This mix of French carols and Latin liturgy, dating from 1700, is said to have considerable charm. On Sunday there is a short telling of the Christmas story in words (St. Matthew, St. Luke) and music (Le Begue, De Cabezon, Ireland and Bach) by Ernest Jenner and Nat Offord.

Later on Saturday 3YC will broadcast Bach's “Christmas Oratorio" in full. This is an arguable decision for in Bach s day oratorio was very much what composer made it and this one is a sequence of six cantatas intended for performance on the six days be- *, ween Christmas and New xear. They use biblical narrative, a bit of reflection and then prayer. Because they were each intended for specific days in a particular year, musicologists have pinned the composition down at Christmas. 1734. Lumping them together in a broadcast turns

them into an endurance course, rather like trying to hear all the English Suites at once. VIENNA FESTIVAL

On Monday the first of eight weekly programmes from this year’s Vienna Festival will be broadcast Leonid Kogan will be heard with the Moscow Radio Orchestra in Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto. Written for David Oistrakh, this work was introduced to the world in 1955 on Oistrakh’s first American tour and was then acclaimed as one of the composer’s best works. SPORT ON 3YC National sporting commentaries will be heard from 3YC in the day over the holiday period and, alas, some of the sports programmes will annex great chunks of serious listening thne.

Michael Tippett. whose Second Piano Sonata will be broadcast from 3YC on Thursday evening. In this work there is no development in the orthodox sense. The work, which is in one movement, is built up of eight thematic blocks of diverse speeds, characters and timbres which are balanced by simple juxtaposition. The pianist is John Ogdon. NADGER PLAQUE It was in 1656 that the dreaded Nadger Plague swept across Europe. Ned Seagoon describes the symptoms in his memoirs. “It starts with a plin of polo after a surfeit of pomfrets,” he writes. “But then you get a quil of quols and quams, and once that

happens, well, you spooned.” But don’t worry, there is a cure. Just take poison! To find out what happened during the plague, tune into 3YA on Saturday morning to catch “The Goon Show.” Apparently goooery te very much a part of the goons’ lives. Spike Milligan toid recently of Mm time he borrowed Peter SeUers’s old London fiat when his own was being potnind. “I slept in hte bed and he told me thwt a button over the bed was a lamp,” Milligan said. “I pressed * and nothing happened, so I thought it was fused. I didn’t know that at that moment in Highgate Police Station a beH was ringing which said Peter SeUers’s flat had been burgled. Five minutes later five policemen jumped on me in bed. I had to get references from priests before they released me.”