A Radio Review PRELUDED by an embarrassingly abject announcement, Mr.
J. B. Priestley gave his delayed Talk last Monday ; and it is a compliment to him that, after so much publicity, there was no sense of anti-climax. Mr. Priestley is another proof of the contention that what is mainly needed for a good micro- phonic manner is a vigorous and rich personality : there was a rare gusto about him and a disarming hint of the Yorkshire dales. His Talk mostly consisted of putting up a guy and throwing stones at it-for I refuse to believe that he meant us to take him quite seriously. If he did, then it was a little unfortunate that his fierce castigation of the High Brow should have been preceded, earlier in the evening, by Miss Sackville-West's impassioned plea for the work of D. H. Lawrence. Practically all Mr. Priestley's gibes were applicable to Lawrence ; and would he seriously like to contend that Lawrence was the drivelling humbug he sees in all High Brows ? Really he was making a plea for a return to Vic- torianism : one could almost see Dickens nudging his elbow as he threw his last piece of advice at the shivering High Brow -" Be a man ! " Incidentally, Miss Sackville-West's out- spoken comments on the Post Office, for its action in con- fiscating some of Lawrence's poems, revealed a welcome loosening of the censorship which has won the B.B.C. much discredit in the eyes of intelligent listeners.
A new radio-play by Mr. L. du Garde Peach is to be broad- cast twice next week. It is called Nor'-West, and deals with wind and storm and mystery in the most treacherous of all seas. It is evidently an attempt to follow up the success of Mary Celeste, one of the most popular plays ever broadcast. I doubt whether the attempt is altogether wise. Mary Celeste was based on historical fact and I believe that a great deal of the interest shown in the play was due to the contro- versy which still rages round the name of that mysterious ship. It remains to be seen whether Nor'-West will prove as attractive. Personally, I prefer Mr. Peach in the vein of his recently broadcast Bread, a play whose theme was so contemporary and essentially dramatic that I wondered no one had exploited it before. A starving world over- stocked with wheat-that was a splendid theme for a radio- play and Mr. Peach handled it admirably. I hope he will give us more such plays to bite at. Meanwhile, here is his Nor'-West. It will be produced, as was Mary Celeste, by Peter Creswell. And by a happy coincidence, on Thursday, Mr. MacCarthy is giving a talk on Conrad : " Active Adven- ture mixed with Spiritual Adventure."
The B.B.C. winter musical season begins in earnest next week. Thereafter, apart from spasmodic celebrity recitals, there will be three musical programmes each week which should on no account be missed. They are the Wednesday Symphony Concert from the Queen's Hall, the Sunday night Orchestral Concerts, and the Saturday night Chamber Music Concerts from the new Concert Hall at Broadcasting House. These three series are the backbone of the B.B.C.'s serious musical programme and on them must be based our criticism of the B.B.C.'s musical standards. The authorities probably pride themselves most (and with good cause) on the Queen's Hall Symphony Concerts ; but on the whole last year's listeners seemed to prefer the Sunday night Orchestral Concerts which were relayed from the old converted wharf (Studio Number Ten) down by the river. Partly, of course, this is due to the fact that nore listeners are free to listen regularly at nine o'clock on Sunday night than at eight o'clock on Wednesday ; but partly it is due to the more intimate and less showmanlike nature of the Sunday concerts.
Public concerts do not invariably make good broadcasts : there is a distraction about them, a sense of something being missed ; whereas, in the case of studio concerts, there is nothing-unless it be the announcer's shy little attempts to be helpful-to get between the listener and the music. Next Sunday brings us the first of this winter's series of Sunday night Orchestral Concerts, with Egon Petri as soloist and
Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony as the chef d'oeuvre. This melodious and orchestrally competent and (as some insist) most unsatisfactory composer comes to the fore again on Wednesday, when Mischa Elman will play his Violin Concerto from the Queen's Hall.
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