IN BRIEF

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 137, 11 June 1936, Page 30

IN BRIEF

JOTTINGS FROM FAR AND 1 NEAR A well-known local singer adopted a novel method to enable the Australian Broadcasting Commission to appraise his talent. Upon being advised that an engagement could not be considerea without an audition he recorded a representative selection of his songs and mailed the records to the manager of the Australian service. These proved so satisfactory that an engagement for an Australian tour followed by return mail.

What is stated to be a true story con-' cerns a recent broadcast in Norway of Bernard Shaw's "Major Barbara." During the preliminary work of the effects department the producer was anxious

to get a realistic recording of band music as a background to the scene in which Barbara gives her millionaire father an impression of her Salvation Army activities. It was decided that the best course would be to have the brass section of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra playing in the open, so the players took up a stance in a small courtyard next to the broadcasting headquarters. Now this same courtyard backed on to the Hotel Continental, and as soon as the music began to go round and round and the engineers started recording, unexpected sounds were registered on the discs. There were the squeaks of opening windows, and a few seconds later the jingle of a stream of coppers. ' The ex-Kaiser Wilhelm II is reported to have become a convert to radio. Until a few months ago the »x-Kaiser , is stated to have been strongly prejudiced against broadcast reception, but in order to follow the funeral ceremonies of the late King George V he ordered the installation of a receiver iat Doom. So impressed, was he at the beauty and dignity of the broadcast that, it is reported, his prejudice against broadcasting has completely disappeared. This reminds one of the old lady who had refused all these years to have that modern contraption—a radio set. She was eventually persuaded by a friend to give it a trial, and one day her local dealer arrived with a set. He switched on and his hopes rose as the old lady's face lit up. "That was beautiful," she said when the music ended. "Please play it once more." The dealer was sorry but she could not hear that particular item again. "Very well, I won't have the set, you can take it away," replied the old lady, who apparently was used to having her own way. Included in the 8.8.C.'s Queen Mary broadcasts was a symphonic rhapsody in the modern idiom eiititled "Transatlantic Rhapsody." The composer, who was specially commissioned by the 8.8.C. to write this work, is Mr. George Posford, who achieved world-wide success with his "Good-night Vienna" and "Invitation to the Waltz." The "Rhapsody" is descriptive, first portraying the departure and the colossal activity at the docks and then forming a kaleidoscope of cheering crowds, bands playing and sirens of tugs, as the giant liner leaves the quay. The second theme is the open sea—a romantic theme on the grand scale, depicting the achievement which the Queen Mary represents in British shipbuilding. Theme three seeks to represent the conflict between two great forces, the ship's mighty engines and the sea. Next comes a descriptive picture of life aboard with its dance bands, swimming pool, cabarets, etc. The finale provides a glimpse of the mighty liner as she ploughs her way through the seas on a moonlit night.