This Week at The Classical Station
by Chrissy Keuper
September 14 and 15, 2024
Hello, Weekend!
Tune into The Classical Station for a great soundtrack to whatever you have planned.
Saturday:
Join Haydn Jones at 6pm ET for the Saturday Evening Request Program. The playlist can be found here, and you can make requests for next week’s programs here.
Sunday:
This week’s Great Sacred Music includes performances by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus; the Bach Ensemble; and organist Edoardo Bellotti, with works by John Knowles Paine, Horatio Parker, J.S. Bach, and others. Our featured work is Mass, Op. 4 by Camille Saint-Saëns.
Join Mick Anderson for Great Sacred Music at 8am ET, following Sing for Joy.
And on Preview!, Rob Kennedy speaks with North Carolina composer Dan Locklair about the latest recording of his music by the Choir of Royal Holloway, From East to West. We’ll also have more of the latest new releases in the classical music world.
On these dates in the history of classical music:
Cherubini with a bust of his mentor, Giuseppe Sarti. Painting by François Dumont, c. 1792.
Italian composer Maria Luigi Carlo Zenobio Salvatore (he went by Luigi) Cherubini was born September 14, 1760, in Florence. Cherubini began his musical training at the age of six with his father and was considered a child prodigy; he studied counterpoint and dramatic style and had composed several pieces of religious music by the time he was thirteen. In 1780, he won a scholarship from the Grand Duke of Tuscany to study music in Bologna and Milan, and he began writing operas almost immediately; his first operas premiered in Venice in 1783. Cherubini went to London in 1785 to explore and experiment, and produced operas for the King’s Theatre. Later that year, he traveled to Paris with his friend violinist Giovanni Battista Viotti and received a commission to write his first tragic opera. Cherubini ended up spending the remainder of his life in France, with the exception of short trips to London and Turin. He was appointed director of the Théâtre de Monsieur in the Tuileries Palace in 1789 (later, the Théâtre Feydeau). The French Revolution forced Cherubini to seek governmental appointments; he was appointed Napoleon’s director of music in Vienna in 1805, then an associated member of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands. He wrote more and more sacred music, including seven masses, two requiems, and many other pieces. He was appointed Surintendant de la Musique du Roi in 1814 and held the post until 1830. In 1815, he was commissioned to write a symphony, an overture, and a work for chorus and orchestra by London’s Royal Philharmonic Society, which increased his international fame; his Requiem in C minor (1816) was also a major success. Cherubini became director of the Conservatoire de Paris in 1822. His operas and his sacred music are considered to be his most significant compositions, although Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the greatest living composer of his era and praised his string quartets and his String Quintet for Two Violins, Viola, and Two Cellos. He was named Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur (1814) and Membre de l’Académie des Beaux-Arts (1815); in 1841, he was the first musician to be named Commandeur de la Légion d’honneur.
Jessye Norman in Dido and Aeneas with the Opera Company of Philadelphia, c. 1982. (Photo by Bernard Gotfryd – Courtesy of Library of Congress)
And American soprano Jessye Norman was born in Augusta, Georgia, on September 15, 1945. Norman was a singer from early childhood. She studied opera at Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan and then won a full scholarship to train at Howard University; she went on to the Peabody Institute and the University of Michigan for graduate studies. She began her operatic career in Europe when she won the ARD International Music Competition in Munich in 1968 and sang with the Deutsche Oper Berlin, making her debut as Elisabeth in Wagner’s Tannhäuser, then as Verdi’s Aida at La Scala in Milan. Her first appearance in the U.S. was in 1982 with the Opera Company of Philadelphia and she continued to sing many leading roles with many other companies, including the Metropolitan Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Paris Opera, and the Royal Opera, London, to international acclaim. Norman was asked to sing at the second inauguration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan; for Queen Elizabeth II’s 60th birthday celebration in 1986; she performed La Marseillaise for the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution on July 14, 1989; sang at the 1996 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in Atlanta and for the second inauguration of U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1997. She performed many, many concerts and recitals as well, and made a lot of recordings, winning five Grammy Awards in her lifetime, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. She was also a member of the National Medal of Arts and the British Royal Academy of Music; holds the Légion d’honneur; was named Honorary Ambassador to the United Nations in 1990; and was awarded more than 30 honorary doctorates from various universities and conservatories.
Enjoy your weekend, Listeners! We thank you for listening, and for your support.
Friday, September 13, 2024
Hello, All! And Happy Friday to you.
Blue Self Portrait by Arnold Schoenberg, c. 1910.
It’s Friday the 13th, so it’s a great day to read about triskaidekaphobia and Arnold Schoenberg’s fear of the number 13.
It’s also All-Request Friday, and we’re playing your favorites and dedications all day and into the night! (And again tomorrow on the Saturday Evening Request Program.) The request programs playlists are here if you’d like to know when yours will air, and if you want to make a request for next week, you can do that here. We love hearing what you’ve chosen!
On today’s date in classical music history:
Clara Wieck Schumann, c. 1888. (Photo by Elliot & Fry – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of German pianist, composer, and teacher Clara Josephine Wieck (later, Schumann) in Leipzig in 1819. Wieck’s parents were both pianists and her mother was also a successful singer. She was a prodigy who was trained by her father in piano, violin, singing, and music theory and composition; she made her official debut in 1828 at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig at age nine and was touring and performing regularly and successfully at age eleven. Also in 1928, Wieck met fellow pianist and future husband Robert Schumann, who ceased his study of the law and began taking piano lessons with Wieck’s father. Throughout the 1930s, she toured Europe and performed for and with almost too many famous musicians and cultural figures to name here, including Goethe, Liszt, Paganini, Chopin… that list just goes on, and she was still just a teenager.
Wieck had been composing since childhood and continued to do so throughout her life. She married Schumann in 1940, in spite of her father’s vehement opposition to the match, and although the births of the couple’s eight children meant she no longer performed as often, she continued to write music. Her earliest works were for piano, including what is still one of her best-known compositions: Piano Concerto in A minor, written when she was 14. After her marriage, she began to compose lieder, choral works, and chamber music. The Schumanns wrote one composition together in 1841: Liebesfrühling (Spring of Love), and she wrote the Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 17 (1846) and Three Romances for Violin and Piano, Op. 22 (1853) for the violinist Joseph Joachim, with whom she often played privately and performed publicly. The Schumanns were also supporters and friends of Johannes Brahms and she performed the premieres of many of his works. Wieck-Schumann began touring again in 1856 (just before her husband’s death) and she continued to tour and perform throughout Europe until 1891 (often with Joachim), despite an arm injury (1874) and subsequent neuralgia. From 1878-1892, she taught piano at Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt and was the only woman on the faculty. Wieck-Schumann was instrumental in the popularity of her husband’s music; aside from her performances, publishing and publicizing his music was nearly her sole focus after his death. Her own compositions were largely forgotten after her death in 1896 until a revival of her music in the 1970s. She was then and is still regarded as one of the premiere pianists of the Romantic era, and her work is often recorded and performed.
Thursday, September 12, 2024
Hello, All! And a very merry Friday Eve to you, wherever you may listening.
On this week’s Thursday Night Opera House, Sir Neville Marriner conducts the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, the Ambrosian Opera Chorus, and a cast of wonderful soloists in this 1990 recording of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s comic opera Così fan tutte, an exploration of immorality and virtue, love and fidelity (or infidelity, as the case may be). Fiordiligi (Karita Mattila) and her sister Dorabella (Anne Sofie von Otter) are engaged to Guglielmo (Thomas Allen) and Ferrando (Francisco Araiza). Their friend Don Alfonso (José van Dam) proposes a wager that the men’s lovers will not be faithful if they are tempted by others.
Join Dr. Jay Pierson at 7pm ET for the hijinks of Mozart’s comic masterpiece.
On this date in classical music history:
Dmitri Shostakovich playing at the Column Hall of the House of Unions in Moscow, c. 1950s. (Photo by Vsevolod Tarasevich – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich in 1906 in St. Petersburg (which became Petrograd in 1914). He had obvious musical talent as a child and his first piano lessons were with his mother at the age of nine. At age 13 (1919), Shostakovich entered the Petrograd Conservatory (before, and later, the St. Petersburg Conservatory, headed then by Alexander Glazunov, who monitored Shostakovich’s progress and recognized his talent) to study piano and composition; in 1925, he enrolled in conducting classes. He wrote his First Symphony that year, and became internationally known as a major composer after its premiere in 1926. His relationship with the government of the Soviet Union was complex, unsurprisingly, and many of his successful early compositions were later censored by government officials, jeopardizing his career. In fact, although Shostakovich was already a member of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (the supreme government institution), his work was denounced in 1936 (and some of his friends and relatives were imprisoned and/or executed) and again in 1948; even after the denunciations were rescinded, the government interfered with performances of his music. He remained a party man throughout his life, however, and was a member of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union (1962 until his death); chairman of the RSFSR Union of Composers (1960–1968); and a recipient of the Order of Lenin. Shostakovich was highly influenced by Gustav Mahler’s music, but his style allowed for incredible contrasts and atonality. He wrote symphonies and concerti; chamber music and ballets; operas and song cycles; and music for both theatre and film.
Tatiana Troyanos in New York City, c. 1990. (Photo by Erica Davidson)
And it’s the birthdate of American mezzo-soprano Tatiana Troyanos in 1938 in New York City. During her childhood, Troyanos lived for about 10 years at the Brooklyn Home for Children, where her musical studies began with piano lessons under Metropolitan Opera bassoonist Louis Pietrini. She then studied at Brooklyn Music School and wanted to be a concert pianist, until a teacher heard her sing with New York’s All City High School Chorus at the age of 16 and offered her a spot at the Juilliard Preparatory School, studying voice. In 1959, Troyanos was chosen as a soloist for J.S. Bach’s St. John Passion, then for Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem in 1962. She debuted as an operatic singer with the New York City Opera the next year (Hippolyta in Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and sang with the NYCO and various other U.S. opera companies until 1965, when she left for Europe and more performance experience, starting with the Hamburg State Opera. Troyanos returned to the U.S. in 1971 and sang with every major opera company before making her debut with the Metropolitan Opera in 1976. She performed regularly with the Met until her death in 1993 and was an internationally beloved singer throughout her career, known for her dramatic intensity and her warm and versatile voice.
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Wednesday, September 11, 2024
New York City skyline with The Tribute in Light 9/11 memorial and the Statue of Liberty. (Getty Images)
Patriot Day
Twenty-three years have passed since the events of September 11, 2001, and The Classical Station is taking the day to reflect with special music. Listen and remember with us.
On this date in the history of classical music:
Jenny Lind, c. 1850. (Daguerreotype by Luther Boswell – in The Chrysler Museum collection – Courtesy of Library of Congress)
September 11, 1850, was the first of 150 concerts on an 18-month U.S. tour of Swedish soprano and opera megastar Jenny Lind. The idea was spawned by P. T. Barnum, who agreed to pay Lind $1000 per performance. Lind was already a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music and was a superstar in the opera world, and she planned to give most of her proceeds to schools in her native Sweden. The first two performances of the tour (on September 11 and 13, 1850) were charity concerts in New York City; Barnum sold more than 4400 seats for the September 11th show at auction, raising almost $25,000. For the concert on the 13th (and henceforth), Lind persuaded Barnum to make most seats available for one or two dollars each. In early 1951, fatigued with Barnum’s marketing tactics, Lind severed her contract with him and continued her tour throughout the U.S., Cuba, and Canada until May of 1952.
Arvo Pärt. (Photo by Eric Marinitsch – Courtesy of Arvo Pärt Centre)
And it’s the birthday of Estonian-American composer Arvo Pärt, born in Paide in 1935. Pärt was composing his own music by the time he was a teenager and began serious musical study in 1954 when he attended the Tallinn Music Middle School, then the Tallinn Conservatory for composition; his attendance at the Conservatory followed military service, which included playing oboe and percussion in the army band. He wrote his first vocal composition during this period (the cantata Meie aed (Our Garden) for children’s choir and orchestra), and also began working as a producer for Estonian public radio broadcaster Eesti Rahvusringhääling. Pärt wrote the first 12-tone music in Estonia (Nekrolog, 1960) and won First Prize in a competition overseen by the Soviet Union Society of Composers. In 1968, he wrote Credo, an overtly sacred work that conflicted with much of Soviet culture and led to a creative crisis for Pärt, himself. He took a break from composing for several years to study and find inspiration in the early music of the medieval and Renaissance periods. In 1976, he began to compose again, soon revealing both new music (Tabula Rasa (1977); Spiegel im Spiegel (1978)) and a new compositional style that he named tintinnabuli. Pärt is often hailed as one of the greatest composers still living and a pioneer of mystical minimalism. He holds many, many honors, including a membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters Department of Music (1996); an appointment to the Pontifical Council for Culture (2011); and Honorary Doctor of Music, University of Oxford (2016).
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Attention: Ticket Giveaway TOMORROW
Carlos Migues Prieto with the North Carolina Symphony
Violinist James Ehnes with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, c. 2022. (Photo by Nathaniel Lim, The Straits Times)
Tomorrow (Wednesday, September 11) on Classical Café, between 11am-12pm ET, George Leef will give away a pair of tickets to the North Carolina Symphony’s Symphonie fantastique (September 21st, 8pm ET – Meymandi Concert Hall – Raleigh, NC). Carlos Migues Prieto conducts the NCS and violinist James Ehnes, with music by Gabriela Ortiz, Sergei Prokofiev, and Hector Berlioz. Tune in and win an evening at the symphony!
Put in your requests for this week’s All-Request Friday and the Saturday Evening Request Program, if you haven’t already. It’s a highlight of the week for the announcers and for your fellow listeners! We always look forward to hearing from you, to seeing what you’ve chosen, and to reading your dedications.
On this date in classical music history:
Christopher Hogwood, conductor. (Hermann Wüstmanndpa Picture-Alliance, via Associated Press – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
English conductor, harpsichordist, musicologist, and writer Christopher Hogwood was born in Nottingham in 1941. Hogwood studied Music and Classics at Pembroke College, Cambridge (David Munrow was a fellow student), then studied performance and conducting under Raymond Leppard, Mary Potts, Thurston Dart, Rafael Puyana, and Gustav Leonhardt. In 1967, Hogwood and Munrow founded the Early Music Consort, and in 1973, Hogwood founded the Academy of Ancient Music. He was artistic director of Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society (1986-2001, and Conductor Laureate for the remainder of his life); artistic director of the Mostly Mozart Festival (1983-1985); and musical director of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota (1988-1992). Hogwood made his operatic debut in 1983 in St. Louis, Missouri, and conducted the Berlin State Opera; La Scala, Milan; Royal Swedish Opera; the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, Chorégies d’Orange, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Australia; Teatro Real in Madrid; and the Zürich Opera House. He made many recordings with the Academy of Ancient Music, but also did many solo recordings of works for harpsichord (and other historical keyboard instruments). He was appointed Professor of Music at Gresham College, London in 2010; Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University in 2012; and was also Honorary Professor of Music in the University of Cambridge; Consultant Visiting Professor of historical performance in the Royal Academy of Music; and visiting professor at King’s College London.
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Monday, September 9, 2024
Hello Listeners, and welcome to a brand new week!
Neeme Jarvi and the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, c. 2018. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Monday Night at the Symphony features the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1926. The program includes music by Leo Delibes, Edouard Lalo, Jules Massenet, and more conducted by the orchestra’s longest-serving Music Director, Neeme Jarvi.
Join us at the symphony at 8pm ET.
On this date in the history of classical music:
Conductor Ádám Fischer. (Photo by Szilvia Csibi, Müpa Budapest – Courtesy of KD Schmid Artist Management)
Hungarian conductor Ádám Fischer was born in Budapest in 1949. Fischer (along with his younger brother, conductor Iván Fischer) was a member of the children’s choir of Budapest National Opera house, then he studied piano and composition at the Bartók Conservatory in Budapest, then conducting with Hans Swarowsky in Vienna and with Franco Ferrara at Accademia Chigiana in Siena. He began conducting in Munich, Freiburg, and other German cities, then started a long collaboration with the Vienna State Opera in 1973 (he was named an honorary member of the company in 2017). In 1982 he made his debut at the Paris Opéra (conducting Der Rosenkavalier) and his La Scala, Milan, debut in 1986 (Die Zauberflöte). In 1987, he founded the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra (Österreichisch-Ungarische Haydn Philharmonie) and started the Haydn Festival in the city of Eisenstadt; he made the first digital recordings of the complete Haydn symphonies for the Nimbus label with the orchestra. In 1989, Fischer founded the first Gustav Mahler Festivals in Kassel. He was appointed chief conductor of the Danish National Chamber Orchestra in 1998 (until 2013) and is also currently chief conductor of the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker (2015-). Fischer has received the Wolf Prize of the Wolf Foundation in Jerusalem; the Gold Medal in the Arts of the Kennedy Center, Washington; is a member of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights; and was awarded the International Classical Music Award for lifetime achievements in 2022.
Ticket Giveaway on Classical Café this Wednesday, September 11
This Wednesday (between 11am-12pm ET), we’ll give away a pair of tickets to the North Carolina Symphony’s Symphonie fantastique (September 20-21, Raleigh, NC). Carlos Migues Prieto conducts the NCS and violinist James Ehnes, with music by Gabriela Ortiz, Sergei Prokofiev, and Hector Berlioz. Tune in for your chance to win!