London Office 10a Soho Square
London W.1
THE GRAMOPHONE Incorporating VOX. TH E RA 0 I 0 C RITI C and BROA DCAST REV lEW
Edited by
COMPTON MACKENZIE and CHRISTOPHER STONE
Telephone Gerrard 2136. 2: 37
Telegrams ParmaxtO, Rath, London
Vol. XIII
SEPTEMBER 1'935
No. 148
SUB-EDITORIAL
Office and the B.B.C. have again thrown their weight without hesitation into the task of entertaining the vast public which might otherwise get rather t ired of looking at a succession of silent radio sets.
SOMEWHERE in the Outer Hebrides Compton Mackenzie and " F Sharp" are watching their new home being built" between Cockle Beach and the long Atlantic beach," and anyone who has seen their earlier homes-from Lady Ham at Burford, 16 North Street in Westminster, and that gaunt house at Hayle, on the St. Ives Bay, to the island enchantments of Isola Bella on Capri, Herm and Jethou in the Channel Islands , and Eilean Aigas by Beaul-y in Invernes s-shire, will share some of the excitement of the making of this new home for all those books and all those gramophone records.
There wilJ be no Editorial this month while these preoccupations prevail, but at least we have received a cabletoannouncethe arrival of the entries in the Programme Building Competition; and i t is to be hoped that. next month the Editor will let us have his comments on the winning essayfl, and the essays themselves.
Meanwhile, we have a long and last reprint of the Editor's Musical Autobio
Without the gates, but near at hand in Addison Road station, was the Imhof train elegantly at rest; and there i t was possible to compare th e noises i.ssuing from the various makes of radio and radiogramophones in compRrative peace.
But these matters are dealt with els ewhere in this
Compton Mackenzie number; and those of our readers who did not go to Rndiolympia this year may rest assured that the new instrument most suited t.o th eir requirements is to be found in the follow ing pages. I f they go farther afield in their sea~ch they will fare not so well.
* * *
There are always compensations in the London of August and September, and tholl!!h the electri c drill has '-been impenitently busy in Soho Stl'eet, the lawn in Sobo Square gr'apby, and if earlier readers are as glad as r was to read once more the memories of the Proms and the Pathetic Symphony and the Fifth Symphony and the Aeolian organ of those far-orr Burford days, they will find those pages just as stimulating to-day as the Editor's views on the August records would have been.
For newer readers, the Musical Autobiography is as vivid as when i t first, appeared in THE GRAMOPHONE in 1923.
* * * * * The Radio Exhibition at Olympia might almost be called i ts Hardest Festival, for the physical exhaustion of everyone who goes to see the show is almost equal to that of the people who provide i t . As usual, the organisers and the organised can congratulate each other on unprecedented successes; and the Post has been kept green through the hot weath er by the woven filigree of so simple a delight as the revolving water-spray below the office windows.
One evening I encountered Andre Mangeot (and his bride) at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park, where, from the outer ring of seats, we watched Fay Compton as the perfect Titania in iVlidsnmmer Night's Dream; and i t was a great pleasure to me, who owed so much to the help which M. Mangeot gave to the National Gramophonic Society in i ts early struggles, to congratulate him on the success of his patient endeavours to get the Purcell Fantasias recorded electrically and more completely than on the N.G.S. records.
The English Music Society- sponsored by the Columbia Graphophone Company-is the fruit of his plant.ing many years ago; and the first album, which on condition that 300 subscribers at two guineas have
