Including Gerard Smyth and Kids of 88

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 26

Saturday Morning with Kim Hill (Radio New Zealand National, 8.10am). Hill talks to Australian author Jane Gleeson-White whose book Double Entry is out this month. She says: “I started writing a book about a Renaissance monk who published the first printed treatise on Venetian bookkeeping in 1494 and taught Leonardo da Vinci mathematics – and I ended up writing a brief history of capitalism through the lens of the apparently unremarkable mechanism that drives it: double-entry bookkeeping.” Topical, indeed. Hill also meets Gerard Smyth, director of When a City Falls, a documentary feature on the Canterbury earthquakes, which will screen in cinemas and on TV3 next year.

Kids of 88, photo Babiche Martens/NZH

Kids of 88/Mean Girls Recorded Live at Roundhead Studios (95bFM, 11.00am and Friday, 2.00pm). Brought to you by the letter “s” today is Auckland New Wave duo Kids of 88 (Sam McCarthy and Jordan Arts), who describe their music as “a cross between a late 80s police-drama intro theme and a sophisticated super hussy”. “Slutty”, “sleazy”, “sweaty” and “suggestive” also crop up. Perhaps they are sponsored by Sesame Street. Mean Girls (bFM Breakfast co-host Zac Arnold and sculptor Martin Selman) are another couple of blokes who hail from Napier but have relocated to Auckland. They describe their sound, even more weirdly, as “dentist drills, splitting wood, pulled fingernails and home invasion”. What’s not to love? There will be live streaming and podcasts on 95bfm.com and video on the Listener website.

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Election 2011 (Radio New Zealand National, 8.04pm). Kathryn Ryan and Simon Mercep present the election results as they flow in, with RNZ’s news and political team, commentators and analysts to keep you up to speed with what it all means.

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 27

Morning Report Election Special (Radio New Zealand National, 8.10am). The Morning Report after the night before, except that it isn’t, being Sunday and all, and Geoff Robinson’s co-presenter is Mary Wilson, not Simon Mercep, who is busy stuffing up his body clock by doing an evening show. But we know they’re up to it: you’ll get cogent analysis, speeches of victory and defeat and a mark out of 10 for the election coverage from RNZ’s Mediawatch team.

Opera on Sunday (Radio New Zealand Concert, 3.00pm). Opera was made for mad scenes, and Donizetti’s classic tragedy, Lucia di Lammermoor, has a particularly good one, when poor Lucia turns her bridal bedroom into a chamber of horrors after being forbidden to marry her true love. This recording, featuring soloists with the Mariinsky Theatre Chorus and Orchestra and conducted by Valery Gergiev, won the Editor’s Choice award in October’s Gramophone magazine. It stars Natalie Dessay as Lucia, Pitor Beczala as Edgardo and Vladislav Sulimsky as Enrico.

MONDAY NOVEMBER 28

Music Alive (Radio New Zealand Concert, 8.00pm). American ensemble the Brentano Quartet have been together since 1992 and play the entire two-century range of standard quartet repertoire. But they have a special love for Beethoven and are named after Antonie Brentano, Beethoven’s supposed “immortal beloved” – a married woman with whom he was thought to be in love. Tonight’s concert, recorded in the Auckland Town Hall in June, features works by Mozart, Hartke, Byrd, Gibbons and, yes, Beethoven: his String Quartet in F.

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 30

Appointment (Radio New Zealand Concert, 7.00pm). It’s the final of 13 Days When Music Changed Forever. Tonight’s programme, November 4, 1964: The Première of Terry Riley’s In C, chronicles the birth of classical music’s minimalist movement with this groundbreaking work by the Californian composer who, in later photos, looks like Gandalf, a wood sprite and a jolly sailor all rolled into one. In C is important because it offered a new concept in musical form, based on interlocking repetitive patterns and utilising multi-layered Eastern-flavoured improvisations. Its influence can be heard in the music of such composers as Philip Glass, Steve Reich and John Adams and rock groups like the Who, Soft Machine, Tangerine Dream and Curved Air.

Music Alive (Radio New Zealand Concert, 8.00pm). Is it that time already? Well, no, but RNZ Concert is getting in early for the festive season. Tonight’s A Christmas Concert from Paris was recorded in that city’s gloriously gothic Basilique Sainte-Clotilde and features the Radio France Chorus, accompanied by piano, harmonium, flutes, oboe, bassoons, percussion and organ. Tonight’s programme includes works by Mauersberger, Schütz, Poulenc, Lauridsen, Maxwell Davies, Rossini, Respighi and Gruber (the ever-popular Silent Night).

FRIDAY DECEMBER 2

Classic Concert (Radio New Zealand National, 11.06pm). Alison Krauss at the BBC pretty much describes this performance, which the country/bluegrass queen and her band Union Station recorded shortly before the release of her album Paper Airplane earlier this year.