ELLA GARDNER (Soprano) CLAUDE PILGRIM (Tenor)
Directed by LEONARDO Kemp
From the Piccadilly Hotel
READINGS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS
French—CAMILLE VIERE : Fables '
(La Fontaine)
JOHN PENNAR Williams (Baritone)
EUPHEMIA GRAY (Pianoforte)
LEON SIGHERA (Violin)
Piano Solos, including ' Littlo Bird' (Grieg)
Played by CECIL Dixon
The Story of 'The Lit Chamber,' from 'The
Path of the King ' (John Buchan )
Various Violin Solos, among which will be ' Tempo di Minuetto' (Kreisler), played by LENA MASON
'Things you may not do in Hockey,' by MARJORIE POLLARD , tho well-known All-
England player
THIS is the second of the new monthly series of Listeners' Talks. This time nearly a tnousana contrioutors nave sent m entries, so it is obvious that the idea of pooling listeners' private stocks of household lore has proved a success.
SCHUBERT'S IMPROMPTUS
Played by VICTOR HELY-HUTCHINSON
(Pianoforte)
Impromptu I
Impromptu IV
SCHUBERT was a master of the miniature.
Nobody has known better than he how to paint vividly on a small canvas. Perhaps, indeed, he paints best on such a canvas, for when he gives himself larger spaces to fill, he sometimes loses his sense of balance and proportion and provides what is in its every phrase lovely, but in places ill-contrived in its form and redundant in its expression.
Or is it, perchance, not Schubort who is in fault, but we ? Are our minds too easily wearied, and should wo with more patient observation come to see that Schubert is as great an athlete of the long-distance run as of tho hundred yards ? Anyhow, at the latter ho cannot bo excelled. We must all admit that !
In a little group of his pieces the element of momentariness is expressed in the very title' Musical Moments '-what an unambitious title, yet how much it has come to mean to us ! Did Schubert invent that title ? Perhaps not: the first publisher of these pieces was one Loidesdorf, himself a composer of sorts, and himself responsible for some pieces called Moments of Melancholy.
Wo find in the Momenta and Impromptus a variety of moods, conveyed and contrasted in mostly simple forms. Very happy, we know, is Schubert's use of Variations, and of that form we have an example in the third Impromptu, to be played to-morrow.
TTALIAN is at once one of the easiest foreign -L languages for an Englishman to leam (especially if he ever learnt any Latin, and remembers any of it) and one of the most pleasant to possess. As the correspondence from listeners amply proves, Signor Breglia's series of readings, of which this evening's is the third, has met with a ready welcome, and obviously there are very many listeners who appreciate the chance of hearing Italian read by an Italian, with instruction in idiom and syntax, and a short talk on Italian literature and affairs. Those who arc following his readings in Hachette's edition of the ' Novelle' should note that this evening he will start at the top of page 17, ' Del resto ,' and continue as far as the bottom of page 20, ' al pasto della Lisa.'
TOMMY HANDLEY (Compere)
DOROTHY DICKSON and GEOFFREY GWYTHER
ELSPETH Douglas REID (Character Studies)
ARTHUR PRINCE and Jim (The First Ventriloquial
Figure with a Personality)
BILLIE HILL and HORACE PERCIVAL
(Musical Comedy Duo)
CHARLES STAINER (Banjo Solos)
JACK PAYNE and the B.B.C. DANCE ORCHESTRA
THIS is the first time that this distinguished traveller and writer has spoken at the microphone. Beginning his career as a diplomat, he abandoned tho Foreign Office for travel and journalism, making himself in particular an expert on the Near and the Far East, and for many years he was director of the foreign department of The Times. His last published book, ' Fifty Years in a Changing World,' was hailed as one of the most brilliant pictures of contemporary history.
A Radio Play by GEORGE CRAYTON
Characters :
' X ' was the name given by three wireless enthusiasts in England to an unknown station that seemed to broadcast the same programme every night-until the one occasion when it was interrupted by a desperate cry for help.
Behind the enigma of the mystery station lies a tale of machinery run riot; of men imprisoned in a fortress of steel; of a city ruled by semi. human machines, crushing the men who made them in their metallic grip. No stranger, more thrilling story was over written by Jules Verne or H. G. Wells. And underlying it all is the hint of that unknown quantity-that dangerous, incalculable ' X '—that lurks in the machinery made by man.