The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 6

6- AlPTTS CfUAIiUlA-Nf 1 1975- -r' I1" 1 I I v. Drama jriil other side, Aquarius, r'eturns at Sunday tea-time, from -5, ijfith Peter Hall in Hie, chair, and whole range of materiil from a summer foray into i Europe-- and Henry Moore, file latest. Bertohicci movie- on location -V-with RV.ssell Harty on Grade Fields and William Walton, not to mention -at the: Highland Games among kilts cabers. That apart, you'll have to waif till around Christmas for ITV's La Boheme in-Jits Covent Garden production; but from next, week (before Aquarius arrives) there 'is Treasures Of Britain, the outcome of the tour of our great houses which. Charlie' Squires was working on before untimely death: 1 Back on BBC-2, where most of such action happens, November 9 will bring The Flying Dutchman, with Gwyneth Jones and Bailey leading -the cast- in a major production' of the first Wagner opera we'vetfbeen offered in years it took a week to record and used three studios.

Before that, music-buffs get a feast "end of week, when September 14 brings the "Leonard ffoncert live irom the Edinburgh festival (mostly Mozart); and.nextSTiight the cameras goto Leeds for the final of the Leeds International 'Piano" Competition, which annually yields names late conjured with shown live for first time. More straightforward music comes with Diversions, a set of 18 concerts given by the BBC's Scottish, Welsh, and Northern regional symphony orchestras. Lord Clark comes back (for three programmes), and Chronicle, and Controversy. New, though, is The First 'Picture Show, giving an airing to the work" of young film-makers. And -2nd House returns, still on Saturdays on' BBC-2, but with a more flexible approach to length from an hour to 90 minutes, according to needs.

Which said, it kicks off with a 150-minute production of Fanshen, David Harris play about modern China, -well-liked in the theatre by our critic. After that, they'll range from Saul Bellow to Bix Beiderbecke. Denis Tuohy, Sire Lawley, Donald MacCormick presenters cf the new Tonight, starting on BBC-1 tonight BBC-l's five-nights-a-weeh current affairs programme, Tonight, starts this evening, the first sign of the autumn schedules dragging television out of the summer slough. PETER FIDDICK looks at a season of unusual promise ITV. We'll start with them, because they've jsipelt out in specific terms how they reckon to grab us at nine o'clock most evenings once the season is under way.

Mondays from tonight offer The Sweeney, Thames's location-shot pulp-crime series with John' Shaw as tough cop -and lots of action. Tuesdays will shortly bring Shades of Greene, TV's first dramatisations- of Graham Greene stories, directed' by Alan Cooke, with Scofield, McKenna, Giellgud Stritch, Pleasence pere: Harry Andrews In the line-up. "What looks the potential winner of their season (despite the foregoing) is The Stars Look Down, Alan Plater's dramatisation of the Cronln novel of life and death in the Tyneside pit communities in the 1900s, which starts on Thursday: Basil Dignam, Avril Elgar. Alun Armstrong, head the lineup, but the best recommendation is that it's made by Granada, whose track record on these things is hot. (Come next week, though, BBC-1 offers an awful clash.) The ITV week-end is strong on drama, but less demanding.

Fridays will bring back Beryl's Lot, a distinctive series with Carmel McSharry as the mum who went to night-school; Saturdays see Governor Googie back Within These Walls; and Sunday, at 7.55, brings the series they never dared give up, not just resuscitated but thrust into the big-audience battle Upstairs, Downstairs; with all your old pals doing their bit. The bad news is that the network has now frank); given up the idea of a new Sunday night single play (as opposed to concealing the fact, as they -did last year). What they offer instead is the promise of a half-dozen in peak-time between now and Christmas, and the claim of 50 over the. year. Best hope for the future, though, is The Man, the series developed by Arthur Hopcraft from his prize-winning play, with Tony Britton back as the smoothie senior Labour MP having trouble in the constituency: it will take over from the Greene series on Thursdays.

BBC-1, Bryan Cowgill made his preemptive strike on the series front last week, opening with Oil Strike North (the, less than impressive oil-pulp series) on Tuesdays and Quiller (the rather more winning spy-pulp series) on Fridays. Next into the breach, tonight at 7.20 p.m., is Angels, the series built round six young nurses (all above-par personable natch) at St Angela's Hospital, Battersea. He has already brought back Dr Who on Saturdays, of course, and Londoners and Anglia-viewers will now find that clashing something cruel with Space 1999, Lew Grade's new space saga which goes out at 5.50 'Saturdays in those two regions, but 7 p.m. Thursdays for everyone else (except Granada and HTV, who have to wait a bit). The deadliest clash for drama-buffs, though, will be on the four Thursdays from next week against the Granada Cronin series already mentioned will be Days Of Hope, the latest creation of Tony Garnett, Ken Loach, and writer Jim Allen, focusing on three people growing up as the Labour movement grew up, hetween 1916 and 1926, and so giving a grass-roots view of some famous political names at work.

Play For Today takes this slot back again after that, kicking off with two plays by Simon Gray, one of our more Michael (BBC-1 Jayston in Quiller from last Friday) pleasantly unpredictable craftsmen, both starring Alan Bates. And on Sundays, the Plays Of The Month continue, Wesker's Chips With Everything in the van. BBC-2. The single plays, as it happens may be best served by the ex-theatre re-thinks on the minority channels. Four are given new television productions Pinter's Old Times, with Barry Foster Peter Nichols's Forget-Me-Not Lane, with Albert Finney and Gemma Television PETER FIDDICK Doubts and certainties YOU WILL HAVE observed that, the habits of the nation and their receptions of programme schedules being what Dhey are, British television rarely goes from the sublime to the ridiculous.

There is evidently more mileage going, most evenings, from the ridiculous (Crossroads; Down the 'Gate) to the sublime (though granted the size and mental state of an audience for the late night documentary, subliminal might be nearer the mark). Sunday teatime, I have to report, is no different in principle. Yesterday, between 4.50 p.m. and a quarter to 7, we progressed from Bob Monkhouse's latest quiz-caper, via a re-run children's thriller, to a discussion on the nature of British justice, featuring a professor of jurisprudence at Oxford University. Professor Dworkin certainly counts as sublime in television terms, whether you love him for the beauty of his mind or for his unusually stylish haircut.

It was certainly not his fault that Mr Monkhouse (whose grooming is of course similarly beyond reproach) had a rather more successful programme. Celebrity Squares, being the successor to the appalling Golden Shot, and with Mr Monkhouse continuing as your toothy host, might be thus reckoned to start wo shots below par. That it has run and run in America would normally put it into the water at the seventeenth. Actually, I rather like it. It's a sort of electronic noughts-und-crosses, with nine showbiz faces Documentary HOTTEST tip from the cutting rooms is The Explorers, possibly the BBC's last fling at world-wide location-shot dramatised 'documentary, but reckoned to be something special even with Search For The Nile and America as pedigree 10 of the great adventurers from Columbus on are featuredin the series, mounted by Desmond Wilcox Growing Pains of PC Penrose (BSC-1 from tomorrow) and Michael Latham.

Granada's much-lauded Disappearing World will return, and Survival, the Anglia series, which is expected to move away wild-, life into more human adventure, as in The Great Zaire River Expedition coming up tonight at 8 p.m. That apart, BBC-l's offerings will include four medical documentaries from Karl Sabbagh, ITV bring back Whicker, and their own range of Tuesday Documentaries, from violence in Chicago to extra-sensory-perception. Roger comes up with three cinema-verite documentaries on decision-making in industry and local government, following the eye-openers on Whitehall and Europe. Titter and bumble: AS FOR the rest Mastermind returns on Thursday, to show how four very clever people can keep' several million well other people agog at their knowledge (and not watching ITV) ITV's variety specials will include Frankie Howerd with Bruce Forsyth (Wednesday, 8 p.m.), Howerd on his own. The Stanley Baxter Picture Show Part III David Bell, who masterminded the first two Baxter shows with such skill, comes up with the antithesis ordinary people telling their own jokes in A Joke's A Joke some new pop shows coming up'.

Couples, a new afternoon drama from Thames how will they have room for repeats Edinburgh Festival GERALD LARIMER Rostropovich MSTISLAV ROSTROPOVICH is appearing three concerts at Edinburgh Festival and playing the cello in only one of In the''-Usher Hall on' Saturday he appeared as conductor with the London Philharmonic Orchestra something of a caricature to look at but definitely very effective to the eair. He would have served -'Mussorgsky better by presenting A Knight on the Bare Mountain "in -the composer's, own vefsion, bttt tile tingling -rythms he sustained and" the' drdiftatic effect he obtained from the brass presented Rimsky-Korsakov's arrangement in 'the most sensational 'light, Perhaps inevitably after that, the lyrical ending came as an anticlimax, in spite of the sensitivity of the flute playing. Shostakovich's preoccupation with death, which was the inspiration on his last two symphonies, seems to have moved him also to make an orchestral version of Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death. Apart from one crashing chord in reaction to the words "grimi death" in the last' sons, it is a discreet arrangement which takes no liberties' and which sounds always authentic. Paradoxically, however, the piano, version is stronger obviously not because it has more colours' available but, on the contrary, because it suggests that it has more to say beyond its obviously limited means.

Anyway, on this first British performance; Galina Vishnevskaya sawg it beautifully, with the generous am voluptuous resouroes of which she has. Jones; and by young Royal Court protege Christopher Hampton The with Helen Mirren and Ronald and Savages with Richard Pasco. Two series look like meriting the rating of popular but hot pulp Colin Welland's six about life in aYorkshire rugger club, with the characteristically song-based Wild West Show and a rather different Bet with a rugby peg, Alan Plater's Trinity Tales, the latter-day Canterbury Tales of a set of fans in a minibus to the Rugby League Cup-final, made at the BBC's Pebble Mill centre in unique co-ordination with a stage-version at the Birmingham Rep. The classic serial is still there though controller Aubrey Singer has dropped its weekly repeat to give his documentaries more chance. Madame Bovary leads off with Francesca Annis in a Giles Cooper adaptation.

Then follows a six-part life of Balzac dramatised by David Turner whose hand was behind Roads to Freedom; then the once-controversial How Green Was My Valley. Dad's Army, returns (BBC-1 from Friday) They're working on Russian co-production for Anna Karenina. Current affairs BBC-1. Tonight's big change is Tonight. The new five-nights-a-week current affairs programme opens at 11 p.m.

That time will vary, but it will be the last of the BBC-1 evening. Sue Lawley, Denis Tuohy, Donald MacCormick, will share the presentation, with a team of reporters who would appear to be a cull of the other programmes made with sharpness in mind John Pitman from Man Alive, David Taylor from The Money Programme. Kershaw from Panorama, filling the squares, two ordinary types choosing which square should face a question, and scoring their nought or cross if they rightly say whether the celebrity got it right or wrong. They win money, of course; though like the godfearing gent yesterday they can lose most of it too, or the final throw. Spontanaeity was just what Doubts and Certainties, in which Professor Dworkin talked to Oliver Hunitin, could have done with.

From about half way through, Dworkin was expounding some, fascinating ideas about relationships between justice, morality, and expediency. One suddenly got a sharp reminder of how narrow is" the range of thought available in the media, and of the many people who could contribute. Whereupon, Mr Huntin, apparently unable to find any more quotes from Sir, Robert Mark with which to challenge the iconoclast before him, consults his clipboard. and retreats to: How did you get into law in the first place But tell me, Sir Isaac, you actually like apples Radio 3 EDWARD GREENFIELD The Prom RECESSION OR not, American orchestras, are flocking across the Atlantic in" relays this summer. Next week Lorin Maazel and the Cleveland Orchestra arrive at the Proms at the start of four weeks in Europe, and on Saturday Pierre.

Boulez brought us his other orchestra, the New York Philharmonic. If the initials D3M linked with the -tsar Lomax, Jessel, Delahaye' from the North. Michael Bunce runs it, Friday is a review (not revue, certainly not satire -official) of the week. And Annan bless all those who sail in It's' i not--, the only change, though. Peter Pagnamenta has gone from Midweek'to Panorama in the'-re-shuffle, so Panorama from tonight (8 10 p.m., as ever) breaks up its single-subject format and takes a more flexible (See Programme Guide -Page 4).

And hot news even Nationwide is dipping its toe in the tide of change: on September 22, Barratt, Bough, and will appear from first of periodic forays out of the Great Wen. TTV. Tfiis Week returns on Thursday, though undergoing one of its minor Fiona Fullerton in Angels (BBC-1 from tonight) time changes, from 8.30 p.m. back to 8 p.m. And, who knows, Lady Plowden might even let us see that abortion programme she personally banned.

World In Action will return on Mondays, a week today at 8.30; and Weekend World, with Peter Jay, just before Sunday lunch on September 14. Londoners get their own current affairs coverage again in The London Programme, but not until November 23. BBC-2. Frostie provides the bait here or rather, Frost plus Donald Baver-stock, who produces his new programme audience-involvement, We British, from Manchester: it starts on Sunday, September 14, at 10.15 p.m. and promises a new chat-and-music mix.

Earlier, weekdays, Newsday will get an expanded news bulletin at 7.30 p.m.,, and Robin Day, Ludovic Kennedy, taking turns with rather more ambitious topical discussions than last season. sponsorship of the New Yorkers' tour suggested something computerised, and Boulez's own reputation even today (what with the mathematical finger-movements of his conducting) also prompts ideas of mechanical efficiency, the was far more than just precise. I have a suspicion that when next week we are able to compare-directly with the Clevelanders in the same hall, the New York orchestra will seem the gentler of the two, the one more concerned with qualities of expressiveness. Getting through the complexities of Elliott Carter's Concerto for Orchestra with such ready virtuosity was a triumph in itself, but it was anything but an aggressive performance. I even suspected that had Boulez been back conducting the BBC symphony Orchestra (always transformed by thorny modern scores) the result would have been more biting.

As it was the New York string tone, so far from confirming the ear-slicing evidence of records, proved unusually silky and sweet, caressing the ear through the most jagged writing. That challenging work at least I should have liked to hear in a drier hall, but when we came to Mahler's Ninth Symphony after the interval the moulded sweetness of string tone the players relaxing in the Albert Hall acoustics instead of fighting it was a total gain. More than anything it characterised a reading which would have been unthinkable from Boulez a year or so ago. We can now understand how Boulez's New York experience has helped to soften him, make him a more obviously expressive conductor. Here (with the Mahleriari example of two great predecessors before him, Bruno Walter and Leonard Bernstein) he encouraged flexible tempi, and though the finale somehow fell short of the tear-laden Comedy BBC-1.

It's the week the new bird joins the Liver Birds (Friday, 8 30pm) she's called Elizabeth Estensen, was spotted in the John, Paul George show, and is said to be tougher than Polly James. But Cowgill proclaims his coming smash hit as tomorrow night's' new offering from Roy "Summer Wine" Clarke: The Growing Pains of PC Penrose, with Bryan Pringle as the Yorkshire village policeman and some earthy laughs. Survival (Harlech Tuesday, other ITV Wednesday, not Granada, Grampian) We've already sampled the other Tinniswood's I Didn't Know You Cared, with mixed reactions (Wednesdays, 9 25, (and the rest are a new series of tested products though Ronnie Barker in more Porridge, Dad's Army, (Friday, 8pm), Till Death, The Good Life, give hope, and The Goodies and The Two Ronnies get repeats from BBC-2. ITV. On Saturday, latish, Elaine Stritch and Donald Sinden start in Two's Company, she as the rich American thriller-writer, he as the anti-" colonials butler she hires when she comes to Britain 'for us, the hope of some abrasive verbal play in' Bill Macllwraith's scripts.

Otherwise, a tentative start to their "Big Season," with a return of the amiable Man About The House on Thursday, but there are new hopefuls coming (as well as the neat Rising Damp with a new series, crummy Carry On repeated). Layton, Jonathan Lynn, follow the pairs who write their own vehicles they 'play twins, one a cop, the other a tearaway in My Brother's Keeper. Cuckoo Waltz will quality one craves at the end, it was the emotional even more than the architectural achievement of the work which struck home all through. And though it may be unfair to single out individual contributions to so fine a performance, some of the most memorable moments were owed-to the principal horn with his incredibly precise trills in the Laendler, as well as. to the first oboe, billed merely as an assistant principal but plainly a master.

Edinburgh Festival HUGO COLE New Music Group ALL THE works played in' the Scottish-Italian chamber concert given by the New Music Group of Scotland on Saturday morning were transparently and economically scored, written with understanding for traditional instruments played in traditional, ways, favouring strict control rather than a random flinging about of sounds. Programmes probably reflect the taste of. the group's director Edward Harper, who studied in Italy; The present flourishing state of Scottish chamber music is probably less due to a revival -ofnational feeling than to the foundation of the New Music Group in 1973 which has stimulated composers in much the samevway as-the Composers' Quartet jn the US has stimulated a new burst of quartet writing when the medium seems to be almost extinct. Maderna's charming Serenata'No. 2 applies Webern-like techniques to diatonic material it is largely monodic be a domestic sitcom about a couple with twins, a mother-in-law, and a friend who stays.

Lila Kaye plays the Jewish momma in My Son Reuben, Bernard Spear her downtrodden son and Rule Britannia is also written by Vince Powell, ITV sitcom's own production line a sitcom of ex-Servicemen, it has Russell Hunter, Joe Lynch, in its central quartet to Upstairs, Downstairs returns (ITV from Sunday) raise hopes. More military reference in Get Some In a National Service sitcom. BBC 2. John Cleese and wife Connie Booth have written a new vehicle, he as Basil Fawlty, proprieter of hotel Fawlty Towers, she as the receptionist. Prunella Scales as Mrs Fawlty, Andrew Sachs as the Spanish waiter if only talent were enough.

Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, ex-Python, are trying their own things, Milligan will be back, Frayn has written six for Eleanor Bron, Bird and Fortune have done a revue, Barry Took has raided Punch, and adapted Stephen Potter's Upmanship books with Richard Briers showing how, Ronnie Barker is back with a series by Roy Clarke, as the large proprietor of a small shop, David Jason assisting. Arts THE NEWCOMER to look out for will be Arena, arriving- on BBC-2, Wednesdays at 8.30, for a look at the theatre and the rest of the arts on alternate weeks, promising a keen eye on what is going on now. On the BBC's popular channel, the main change will be Humphrey Burton's arrival as presenter of Omnibus, still in its Sunday night slot for now. Over on the and so, naturally, avoids dissonance. The resulting angst-free music is quite un-Viennese in spirit, the exact converse of the convoluted waltz in Schoenberg's Serenade, in which the spirit of easy-going Johann Strauss is laced on the analyst's couch.

Margaret ucy Wilkins and David Dorward both seem, to follow Maderna's lead in writing sparingly without filling-up parts and so as to entertain rather than edify. Most of Miss Wilkins's newly commissioned Circus takes Satip's Parade for it's starting point and is rather ominously described as 'a "Fun-piece." But fortunately she does not try to beat Satie at his own game. The work relies more on a. keen sense of instrumental character and ability to invent new and intriguing forms of inter-actfon than on deliberate humour. The late entry of a -trumpeter-clown who interrogates and argues' with each of the other players jn turn "was an amusing once-only Festival trick (at any rate, it produced a satisfactory audience reaction) but the work would effectively survive repetition without visual aids.

David Do'rward's Capriccio for solo viola was by contrast' non-derivative; perhaps a little too much so. The work ruminated on. its basic material, turning it this way and that without apparently' advancing matters very far. Edward Harper's Ricercari took for its starting point (literally, in this per-formance) the last chords of Dalla-piccola's Quaderno Musicale di Annalibera, serene contrapuntal studies for by, but worlds renioved from Bach, Schoenberg and Bartok; A serious, sustained and really impressive piece, in which an unusually constituted ensemble seemed to stimulate 'the composer in new ways, played, is. were all the works in the programme, with great clarity and assurance..