Listening

Press, 20 October 1981, Page 19

Listening

World of books

The name of Richard Rodgers is synonymous with an entire era of Broadway musicals. Beginning his composing career in 1919 with Larry Hart as lyric-writing partner, he followed through the styles of the 1930 s to team up with Oscar Kammerstein in the early 19405. The completely new and trend-setting style which Rodgers and Kammerstein established continued until the death of Rodgers in 1979. The popularity of his music continues, revivals of “Pal Joey" and “Oklahoma” playing in London at the moment to overflow audiences. On the National radio progarmme tonight at 7.30 an hour-long tribute will be presented to Richard Rodgers by New Zealand singers Pat McMinn and Edwin Duff, with the Auckland Radio Orchestra, Tentette and the Big Band Sounds. The music is arranged and conducted by Bart Stokes.

The title “Dames’.’ to most suggests anything but a genteel English girls’ boarding school, but that is the setting for most of Elizabeth North’s novel, reviewed in tonight’s “8.8. C. World of Books” on the Concert Programme at 7.17. The author uses examples of some girls who have not succeeded as their teachers hoped, to illustrate why she feels the kind of education valued in such schools is disastrously unsuitable for girls. “The Oxford Companion to Animal Behaviour” has the answers to many fascinating questions, such as the number of hours a day sloths sleep, or whether cows can dream. Dr David McFarland explains why an ape’s smile is misleading, and how honeybees draw “maps” by dancing for the rest of the hive. The third and last book in tonight’s programme is “The Armenians; A People in Exile” by Professor David Marshall Lang.