ENTERTAINMENT and ARTS

Adolf Hitler, the most notorious champion of Richard Wagner and "racially pure" German music, banished Jewish and Russian musicians from the concert halls of the Third Reich -- but apparently secretly listened to their work.

New light has been shed on the Nazi leader's musical tastes by the discovery of what purports to be 100 of his gramophone records found in the attic of a former Soviet intelligence officer, Lew Besymenski. "There were classical recordings, performed by the best orchestras of Europe and Germany with the best soloists of the age," Mr Besymenski said in a document explaining how the records came into his possession.

The 86-year-old, who helped to interrogate captured Nazi generals, died earlier this summer. The document and the record collection have now been made available to Der Spiegel magazine. "I was astonished that Russian musicians were among the collection," Mr Besymenski wrote.

Hitler dismissed Russians as untermenschen, subhumans, and was contemptuous of their contribution to world culture. "Yet the records included works by Tchaikovsky, Borodin and Rachmaninov -- scratched from frequent playing and all clearly labelled 'Fuhrerhauptquartier', the Fuhrer's headquarters." The Soviet intelligence officer had found them in Hitler's chancellery in Berlin in May 1945, still packed in crates. Hitler's staff were counting on an evacuation to the Nazi leader's alpine hideaway on the Obersalzberg and it was known that he could only relax with his music.

Mr Besymenski, then a captain in military intelligence, kept quiet about the records during his lifetime for fear that he would be accused of looting. The most astonishing fact about the records -- essentially Hitler's "Best of ..." collections -- is the presence of Jewish performers. Among the recordings is a Tchaikovsky concerto performed by the virtuoso Polish Jewish violinist Bronislaw Huberman. Hitler would have been aware, while listening to Huberman's playing, that he had founded the Palestine Orchestra in 1936 (which went on to be the foundation of today's Israel Philharmonic Orchestra) and that he was living in enforced exile.

The Austrian Jewish pianist Artur Schnabel, whose mother was killed by the Nazis, also had his work in Hitler's collection. It is not known which records in the collection were listened to most frequently, nor have they been formally catalogued. From what is known so far about the Besymenski loot, the records confirm that Hitler had rather obvious, cautious tastes. The perverse element comes not in his rejection of modernism, say musicologists, but rather in his exclusion of great music because it was "racially unacceptable."

Frederic Spotts, author of Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, argues that the remarkable feature of Hitler's musical taste was that he could impose it on a whole nation. "Hitler's problem -- in a way his tragedy -- was that he confused aesthetic drive with aesthetic talent," Mr Spotts said. Hitler claimed that there was no independent Jewish culture. "There was never a Jewish art," he wrote in Mein Kampf, "and there is none today."

Michael Parkinson has announced that his next talk show series would be his last. The renowned host, who has interviewed stars including Muhammad Ali, Fred Astaire, Richard Burton and Orson Welles, is finally calling it a day after 25 years.

“After three enjoyable and productive years at ITV, and after 25 years of doing my talk show I have decided that this forthcoming series will be my last,” the 72-year-old said. “I'm going to take next year off to write my autobiography and consider other television projects.”

Parkinson's latest series concluded on ITV1 at the weekend and the man affectionately known in Britain as “Parky” returns for a final 12-week run in the autumn. Paul Jackson, ITV's director of entertainment and comedy, said: “He has defined the talk show in British television and no one has come near to equalling his record. His name is synonymous throughout the English-speaking world as a benchmark for integrity and quality in the talk show genre.”

There is a reason why some people gag at Barbra Streisand songs and Barry Manilow can chase teenagers out of car parks, a Sydney academic has found. A University of NSW music psychologist Emery Schubert argues these responses are caused by a “differential affect gap” (DAG) -- a discrepancy between the emotion expressed in a song and the emotion felt by the listener. His research found young listeners placed a 57 per cent gap between their emotions and the emotions in Eric Carmen's 1998 schmaltz-fest I was Born to Love You, but only a 4 per cent gap between their emotions and John Butler Trio's Pickapart.

"What we found was that when there was a large gap between felt and expressed emotion, music was liked less," Dr Schubert said. "This is a new finding -- no one's ever actually used this scale before." The scale comes from asking people to plot their emotions while listening to a piece of music, using the four points of dimensional emotion: valence, arousal, emotional strength and dominance. "People like a small gap between felt and expressed emotion, a small differential affect gap. [The research] identifies a new method for rating musical preference through an implicit method," he said.

But the formula will not replace radio station music directors. "It's too hard to program a station like that. You don't know where people are, or how they're feeling," the program director at WSFM, Charlie Fox, said. While unconvinced by the science of the findings, record company talent scout Matt O'Connor said the theory of emotional congruity was something he used. "It's not a formula. It's about a great song with a great melody content and a great emotional content," he said.

Dirty Dancing, the Australian-made musical that has broken box office records in Britain, has had a spectacular entry into the North American market. The theatrical juggernaut, which is booked out in London's West End until 2008, has broken early box office records in Toronto.

The Canadian city will be the first North American home for the musical - which will open there on October 31 -- and the reception from early ticket buyers has been exciting to say the least. First day single-ticket sales broke records, which is no mean feat considering Toronto is viewed as the world's third largest theatre hub behind London and New York.

For Australian promoter Kevin Jacobsen, it is another impressive milestone for the production he opened in Sydney in 2005, with Toronto likely to be the gateway to major US cities -- and, ultimately, Broadway.

"We're doing Toronto, then we hope to go to Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles and maybe San Francisco. We're going to play all these cities before we venture into Broadway," said Jacobsen, who chatted to S about the smash-hit musical last week. "We want to play a lot of North American cities before we move to Broadway, so that when we possibly get there, we've selected the right theatre."

While Australian star Josef Brown will remain in the London production, new cast members are being chosen for the North American show. (No word yet on the likelihood of Patrick Swayze or Jennifer Grey making cameo appearances.) In particular, the leading role of Johnny Castle is yet to be decided.