Playlists

Playlists

We’ve organized our playlists in a couple of ways for your listening pleasure. First of all,  you can see what’s playing right now. You can also see what we played recently and what’s coming up.  Another feature of our playlists is that we give you the recording label and catalog number of the recordings so that you can order them from your favorite classical music emporium.

If you prefer a more compact, printable playlist format, check out our Compact Playlists page.

Request Programs

We offer two weekly request programs.

Every Friday is All-Request Friday here at The Classical Station! We play your requests between 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m., depending on how many requests we receive. Go ahead and request your favorite piece of classical music! You can also dedicate it to a person or an occasion. Want to request a long work like a Mahler symphony? Go ahead. If we have room, we will play it. The “Minute Waltz”? That’s fine—we will find room for short pieces too.

Our collection of 15,000 CDs is pretty extensive; however, from time to time we receive a request for a CD we simply don’t have. If you request something that we don’t yet have in our library, we will substitute a similar piece, and add your selection to our shopping list.

Want to know when your selection will be played? Playlists are posted in advance, so you will be able to see the Request playlists below the daily playlist (almost always, no later than the day before).

On Saturday evenings, from 6:00 p.m. until midnight, you are the music director. The Saturday Evening Request Program has long been a fixture of our programming. Hosts such as Frosty Clarke and Joe Purcell used to take your requests by phone and play them later that evening. Nowadays, most of you submit your requests via our app or our website. And the program is usually oversubscribed a day or two in advance. We hope that you will carry on the tradition and make it part of your weekend listening.

As we mentioned above, our request programs fill up very quickly. We suggest that you use the form on the Request Music page to submit your request even a couple of days in advance. Typically when a request program is oversubscribed, we will play your request on the next request program. So, for example, if All-Request Friday is full, we will play your request on the Saturday Evening Request Program.

Programming

We think that one of the things which make our programming special is that we always have a live announcer bringing you Great Classical Music, around the clock. Call 919-556-5178 anytime to speak with our announcers. Or interact with them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

We are proud of our offering of nine specialty programs, which feature everything from the Renaissance to opera to contemporary music. So, while you won’t usually hear an operatic aria here on a weekday morning, you can hear lots of arias on the Thursday Night Opera House every Thursday evening at 7:00 p.m., and for contemporary works, listen to Wavelengths on Sunday evenings at 9:00 p.m.

Ways To Listen

Worldwide online
The Classical Station
offers unlimited streams of audio on the Internet. Click “Listen Now” at the top of any page on our website to listen in a state-of-the-art AAC stream.

Apps
Download our apps in your device’s store and enjoy Great Classical Music anywhere. The apps also include our blog and interviews.

Apple store

Google Play

Cable
Cable companies distribute our signal to their customers free of charge. Contact your cable company and ask them to carry WCPE, The Classical Station.

FM Radio
You can find WCPE, The Classical Station, on 89.7 FM in central North Carolina. We broadcast via the nation’s first broadband FM antenna (formerly used only for television broadcasting). You can also find us at:

  • 88.3 FM in the North Carolina Sandhills
    (Aberdeen, Pinehurst & Southern Pines, NC),
  • 90.1 FM in Bath,
  • 91.1 in Buxton,
  • 102.9 in Danville, VA,
  • 95.3 in Fayetteville,
  • 88.9 in Foxfire Village,
  • 97.3 in Greenville / Frog Level, NC,
  • 90.9 in Manteo,
  • 106.3 in Martinsville / Bassett Forks, VA, and
  • 89.9 in New Bern

Other Online Streams

Windows Media

Ogg Vorbis

MP3

If the above players are not working for you, please copy/paste one of the following stream links into your Windows Media player, VLC or Winamp player:

Narrow bandwidth stream if you have rebuffering due to Internet congestion:

aac 48k stream rate
http://playerservices.streamtheworld.com/api/livestream-redirect/WCPE_FMAAC.aac

Same sound as embedded player:

aac 128k streamrate
http://playerservices.streamtheworld.com/api/livestream-redirect/WCPE_FMAAC128.aac

If you cannot use an aac stream:

mp3 128k streamrate
http://playerservices.streamtheworld.com/api/livestream-redirect/WCPE_FM.mp3

Podcasts

Did you miss one of our weekly musician interviews on a Sunday evening at 7:00 p.m. on Preview? Or perhaps you missed My Life in Music last month. Not to worry. We offer this special content on podcasts for your listening pleasure. Conversations comes in three flavors: Conversations with conductors, Conversations with performers, and Conversations with composers. Staff announcers Dan McHugh, Bob Chapman, and Rob Kennedy speak with musicians such as Stephanie Blythe, JoAnn Falletta, Dan Locklair, Jan Lisiecki, Benjamin Grosvenor, and more. Download these inspiring conversations and share them with a young musician!