This Week at The Classical Station
by Chrissy Keuper
Saturday and Sunday, 03-04 May 2025
WEEKEND! Wonderful. Come listen to some classical music with us!
Saturday:
At 1pm ET, Saturday On Point brings you the passion, tragedy, and beauty of Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, an unforgettable ballet depicting Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers.
Then, join Haydn Jones for the Saturday Evening Request Program at 6pm ET. Here’s the playlist; make requests for next week’s programs here.
Sunday:
This week’s Great Sacred Music includes performances by the Choir of the Queen’s College, Concordia Sacrae, and Grace Davidson, with works by Edgar Bainton, Joseph Haydn, Antonin Dvorak, and more. Join us at 8am ET, following Sing for Joy.
Valencia Baryton Project
And at 6pmET, Tom Hayakawa has the best new classical releases on Preview!, featuring one of Joseph Haydn’s Baryton Trios performed by the Valencia Baryton Project; cellist Alisa Weilerstein performing Johannes Brahms’ Sonata No. 1, Op. 78; and a lot more.
On these dates in the history of classical music:
Marcel Dupré at the Palais du Trocadéro, c. 1927 (Press photo – Courtesy of Gallica, Bibliothèque nationale de France)
French organist and composer Marcel Dupré was born May 3, 1886, in Rouen. Dupré was a child prodigy born into a family of talented musicians and was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire in 1904 as a piano, organ, and composition student. He won the 1914 Grand Prix de Rome for his cantata Psyché and went on to compose more than 60 works for organ, along with works for piano, orchestra and choir, chamber ensemble, and a number of transcriptions for organ. Dupré’s true worldwide fame came from performing more than 2,000 organ recitals throughout Australia, the U.S., Canada, and Europe in 1920 and 1921, performing almost entirely from memory. In 1926, Dupré was appointed professor of organ performance and improvisation at the Paris Conservatoire (until 1954) and concurrently served as director of the American Conservatory near Paris. In 1954, he was director of the Paris Conservatoire. He succeeded Charles Marie Widor in 1934 as organist at St. Sulpice in Paris, and served in that post until his death in 1971.
Edward T. Cone, date unknown. (Courtesy of Princeton Alumni Weekly)
American pianist and composer Edward T. Cone was born in Greensboro, NC, on May 4, 1917. His formal studies were in composition at Princeton University, where he was the first Princeton student to compose music as his senior thesis and one of the first two to earn a graduate degree in musical composition from the university, as well. Cone continued studies in piano and was a pianist when he served in the U.S. Army and in the Office of Strategic Services during World War Two. He took a faculty position at Princeton in 1946 and was named as a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among Cone’s many compositions are orchestral and chamber works, choral works, and compositions for solo voice.
Friday, 02 May 2025
Happy Friday, Listeners!
It’s All-Request Friday (10am-10pm ET), so join us as we play your favorites and dedications (and then do it again tomorrow on the Saturday Evening Request Program from 6pm to midnight ET).
What’s on the list?
I want to make requests and dedications for next week!
HEADS-UP: Ticket Giveaway
Next Wednesday (May 7th, between 11am-12pm ET) during Classical Café, George Leef will give away a pair of tickets to Carolina Ballet’s production of Swan Lake by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, depicting a tragic romance between Prince Siegfried and the swan princess Odette and revealing the universal dialogues between light and darkness and love and deception. Tune in to win a chance to see this gorgeous and classic ballet!
On today’s date in classical music history:
Alessandro Scarlatti, artist unknown, c. 1692. (Palacio del Duque de Hijar, Epila, Spain – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of Italian composer Alessandro Scarlatti in Sicily in 1660. Scarlatti was sent to Rome as a student around the age of 12, and he was 19 when he caught the ear of Queen Christina of Sweden (with the first of his 115 operas); he was in her service as court composer until 1684. Scarlatti’s music was quite popular and led to more royal service, this time in Naples, where he was maestro di cappella until 1702 (he wrote more than 40 of his operas and lots of other music besides while he was there). He went on to be music master at the theatre of Prince Ferdinando III de’ Medici of Naples; to Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni in Rome; and at Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore. In 1709, he returned to Naples and wrote A LOT more music, including orchestral music, operas, and masses and other sacred music. Scarlatti wrote more than 600 chamber cantatas alone, most of which remain well-known and are performed regularly. He was also an unusual champion of wind and brass instruments for the time.
Thursday, 01 May 2025
A very Happy May Day and Friday Eve to you all!
We celebrate with Thursday Night Opera House, a 1981 recording of James Levine conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Ambrosian Opera Chorus, and incredible soloists performing Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, a political thriller and love triangle set in Rome. The diva Floria Tosca (Renata Scotto) must choose between exposing her artist/political dissident lover Mario Cavaradossi (Plácido Domingo) or giving herself to the corrupt Chief of Police, Baron Scarpia (Renato Bruson), who covets her.
What could go wrong?
Join Dr. Jay Pierson at 7pm ET for some hard choices set to legendary music.
On this day in classical music history:
Walter Susskind in Christchurch, NZ, c. 1970. (From the Christchurch Star, NZ – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of Czech-British pianist and conductor Walter Susskind in Prague in 1913. Susskind’s mother was the first to give him piano lessons. He studied under Josef Suk at the State Conservatorium and with conductor George Szell, becoming Szell’s assistant at Prague’s German Opera, where he made his debut. Susskind escaped Britain when Germany occupied Czechoslovakia (1939) and formed and was pianist with the Czech Trio; joined the Carl Rosa Opera Company (1942); made his first recording (1944); and eventually became a citizen. During his amazing career he was musical director of the Scottish Orchestra (1946-1952); conductor of the Victorian Symphony Orchestra (now the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, 1953-1955); conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (1956-1965); founder of the National Youth Orchestra of Canada (1960); faculty member at The Royal Conservatory of Music; conductor of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (1968-1975); and artistic advisor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (1978-his death in 1980), and he conducted and recorded with many other orchestras around the world.
Wednesday, 30 April 2025
Good day to you, Listeners! Come listen to some great music with us.
On this date in classical music history:
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, c. 1993. (Photo by Nancy Lee Katz – Courtesy of Library of Congress)
A very Happy Birthday to American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, born in Miami, Florida, in 1939. Taaffe Zwilich was composing in childhood and played piano, violin, and trumpet. She studied music at Florida State University, then moved to New York where she played with the American Symphony Orchestra until 1972 under Leopold Stokowski. In 1975, she was the first woman doctoral graduate in composition at Juilliard School; the first woman composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music (1983, Symphony No. 1, originally titled Three Movements for Orchestra); and the first person to be appointed to Carnegie Hall’s composer’s chair (1995). She was solely a composer until 2000, when she joined the faculty of Florida State University.
Tuesday, 29 April 2025
On this date in classical music history:
From left: Pinchas Zukerman, Itzhak Perlman, Zubin Mehta, and Isaac Stern, c. 1980. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
A very Happy Birthday to Indian conductor Zubin Mehta, born in Mumbai in 1936. Mehta’s father was a violinist (and founder of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra) who gave Mehta his first music lessons. Mehta began studies in medicine, but then moved to Vienna in 1954 for studies in conducting at the Akademie für Musik. He won the Liverpool International Conducting Competition in 1958 and he had already conducted the Vienna, Berlin and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras by 1961. Mehta has collaborated with all three orchestras for more than 50 years; he was also Music Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (1961-1967); the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra (1962-1978); the New York Philharmonic (1978-1983), the longest tenure in the orchestra’s history; and the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (1985-2017).
Monday, 28 April 2025
Hello, Listeners!
It’s going to be a great week with great classical music.
This evening at 7pm ET, join Vince Tillona for Drop the Needle, featuring works by Isaac Albeniz, Ottorino Respighi, Ralph Vaughn Williams, and Richard Strauss.
And at 8pm ET, Monday Night at the Symphony features the English Chamber Orchestra and music by Luigi Boccherini, Edvard Grieg, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and more, conducted by Charles Groves, Daniel Barenboim, Raymond Leppard, and Jeffrey Tate.
Tuesday on Classical Café, join George Leef for his Legendary Performer; this week it’s American clarinetist Benny Goodman.
And on Wednesday, (April 30th, between 11am-12pm ET), George will give away tickets to Cary Ballet Company’s full-length production of the ballet Coppélia by Léo Delibes. Dr. Coppélius has built Coppélia, a mechanical doll that is so lifelike that she fools the inventor’s fellow villagers, including Franz who is captivated by her beauty. But Franz’s fiancée Swanhilda schemes to reveal the truth and reclaim his love. Tune in and win some tickets to see this classic ballet!
On this date in classical music history:
It’s the birthdate of American-Dutch soprano Nan Merriman in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1920. Merriman studied singing in San Francisco and Los Angeles and by the age of 20, she was singing on the soundtracks for films being produced in Hollywood. She was discovered by Laurence Olivier, who asked Merriman to accompany him and his wife Vivien Leigh on tour. Over her career, Merriman performed in concert halls and opera houses throughout the world, and on the radio, especially under Arturo Toscanini with the NBC Symphony Orchestra (1944-1953), and made many recordings of both operas and other vocal works, including Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (which she recorded three times).