Two immediately pre-Christmas dramatic broadcasts call for attention. They were
Mr. Whitaker-Wilson's " Mozart " and the St. Hilary Players' performance of a Nativity play. Such catch-penny melodrama as " Mozart. " is in strange contrast to the good work done by the Music Department of the B.B.C. Some of the more romantic moments in the composer's life were slung together on a thread of favourite Mozart melodies. A loutish young Beethoven showed off on the harpsichord ; monstrous play was made of the mysterious .Stranger who commissioned the Requiem ; and Papa Haydn declaimed pretty speeches to the birds busily singing over the paupers' graves. Mozart himself was all that a composer is popularly supposed to be-and never is. How remote all this nonsense was to the sincere, simple and passionate performance broadcast a day or two later by those Cornish villagers ! Music apart, I do not recall any broadcast which gave me half as much pleasure. And after those rich, earthy voices, how machine-made were the voices of the announcers !
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