Listening

Press, 12 January 1981, Page 12

Listening

sketches which vividly conveys the affectionate, but somewhat disrespectful, childhood memories of the author. He reads from one of the stories on “8.8. C. World of Books” and recalls life in Poona and the comic streak he detects in Parsee life. Concert programme, 7.30 p.m. tomorrow. &

“The Brain Book” is a new paperback which has the subtitle,' “Know Your Own Mind and How to Use it.” It is an entertaining book that includes “mind maps,” and it is intended to be useful as well. Its author, Peter Russell, tells how we all need a handbook of the brain to help us in learning, thinking and even taking notes. i $ 3 #

The traveller and writer, Bruce Chatwin, planned to write the biography of a Brazilian slave-trader who founded a family in West Africa. When he visited the area — the town of Ouidah in Dahomey — unexpected and rather frightening events cut short his research. The result, as he tells on the programme, was an unusual and unquestionably “strong” novel about the slave trade seen through the eyes of one of its practitioners — the tragicomic hero of his book “The Viceroy of Ouidah.” Berlin orchestra

In a further programme of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra recorded in concert, Herbert von Karajan conducts Beethoven and Prokofiev. The Beethoven Violin Concerto has as soloist the violinist, Anne-Sophie Mutter. This will be followed by Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 in B flat, Op. 100. Concert programme, 8.30 p.m. tomorrow. Verdi

Act IV of Verdi’s opera, “II Trovator,” which was first produced in Rome in 1853, as heard on tomorrow’s Concert programme at 10.10 p.m. also comes from the Berlin Philharmonic, with Von Karajan conducting. They are joined on this recording by vocal soloists and the Chorus of the German Opera.