I would particularly like to draw attention to a revival
in next week's programmes which everyone should try not to miss. It is Chopin, a romantic play specially written for the microphone by Messrs. Wilfrid Rooke Ley and Christopher Martin - and it will be broadcast on Friday and Saturday. Like the recently heard Mozart, this play is built round the life of the composer-but there, mercifully, the likeness ends. Chopin is an instance of how this kind of thing should be done : it is written in faultless taste, it makes just use of music as a dramatic background, and it really does add something to our appreciation of the composer and his work. When it was first broadcast, in 1931, it was more or less an innovation ; and although the technique has since been copied by other radio dramatists, I do not remember an instance in which it has been bettered. Chopin is romantic without being melodramatic and it never descends to travesty. One feels that its authors really understand their Chopin and are not merely concerned (as was the case with Mozart) in making sensational copy out of the foibles of genius.
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