This Week at The Classical Station
by Chrissy Keuper
Cinema Classics is back!
From 10am ET this Friday 8 August through the weekend, we’ll be broadcasting your favorite classical pieces featured in film, be it Mozart in Amadeus or Dukas in Fantasia.
We want to hear what moved you!
Submit your request here and put “Cinema Classics” in the comments.
Saturday and Sunday, 9-10 August 2025
It’s the weekend! We’re here to accompany your plans with excellent music.
This weekend:
We continue to celebrate the return of Cinema Classics all weekend and Saturday On Point with Peggy Powell at 1pm ET will feature two enchanting ballets that leapt from screen to stage: The Tales of Beatrix Potter and The Red Shoes.
At 6pm ET, Haydn Jones has more of your requests and special dedications (and film-score favorites) on the Saturday Evening Request Program. (You can see the playlist here and make requests and dedications for next week’s programs here.)
Start your sacred Sunday morning at 8am ET with Great Sacred Music, featuring the Tallis Scholars performing Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s Missa Assumpta est Maria in caelum and many other sacred musical wonders. And at 6pm ET, Tom Hayakawa is your host for the best in new and recent classical releases on Preview!, featuring the Ariel Quartet and Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet, Op. 18, No. 3, and Dario Salvi conducting the Sofia Philharmonic’s recording of Griseldis, a ballet by Adolphe Adam.
On these dates in the history of classical music:
A memorial to Johann Michael Bach in Gehren. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
German Baroque composer Johann Michael Bach was born August 9, 1648, in Arnstadt (a cousin of J.S. Bach). Bach became the organist and town clerk of Gehren in 1673, where he remained until his death in 1694. He is famous for the organ prelude In Dulci Jubilo, which was mistakenly attributed to his cousin, J.S.
He also wrote cantatas and chamber music.
John Alldis. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
And English conductor John Alldis was born August 10, 1929, in Ilford, East London, and grew up singing. Alldis was a choral scholar at King’s College, Cambridge and began his career as a choral conductor almost as soon as he graduated, forming and directing the John Alldis Choir and the London Philharmonic Choir; leading the Guildhall School of Music and Drama’s choir; conducting the Danish State Radio Chorus for Radio Denmark; directing the Cameran Singers in Israel and the Hallé Choir in Manchester; and conducting the Groupe Vocal de France, the Netherlands Chamber Choir, the Tokyo Philharmonic Chorus, the Central Philharmonic Society of China in Beijing, and the Lyon Opera. Alldis also won multiple Grammy Awards for his recordings.
Friday, 8 August 2025
It’s Friday, Listeners!
We’re playing your special requests and dedications on All-Request Friday
+ more tomorrow on the Saturday Evening Request Program
+ we’re highlighting Cinema Classics all weekend long.
Here are the playlists.
Make requests and dedications for next week here.
On this date in classical music history:
Jacques Hétu, c. 1984. (Photo by Takashi Seida)
It’s the birthdate of Canadian composer Jacques Hétu, in Trois-Rivières, Quebec in 1938. Hétu’s works are among those in the Canadian repertoire that are most performed. He trained in music at the University of Ottawa; the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal; and at the Tanglewood Music Center in 1959 with Lukas Foss. Hétu took first prize at the 1961 Quebec Music Festivals composition competition and won grants from the Canada Council and the Prix d’Europe, which allowed him to attend the École Normale de Musique de Paris from 1961 to 1963 and at the Paris Conservatory. He joined the music faculty at Laval University (1963-1977); taught composition at the University of Montreal; and was a professor and director at the Université du Québec à Montréal (1979-2000). Hétu is best-known for his five symphonies; his Variations for Piano, Op. 8 (recorded by Glenn Gould); and his Missa pro trecenteismo anno, written for the 300th birth anniversary of J.S. Bach.
Thursday, 7 August 2025
It’s Friday Eve, All!
We’ll celebrate this evening with Thursday Night Opera House, featuring a 1993 recording of Giacomo Puccini’s Manon Lescaut. James Levine conducts the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus with legendary soloists, featuring Mirella Freni, Luciano Pavarotti, and Cecilia Bartoli.
Join us for the opera at 7pm ET.
On this day in classical music history:
Ian Hobson (Courtesy of IHIPF)
A very Happy Birthday to British pianist and conductor Ian Hobson, born in Wolverhampton in 1952. Hobson is a conductor known for leading the orchestra from the piano. He studied piano and conducting at the Royal Academy of Music; Magdalene College, Cambridge; and Yale University. His debut was in 1979 in London and he has performed and recorded with orchestras all over the world since then. Hobson is also a professor and holds posts at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and Florida State University. He’s also on the faculty of the Ian Hobson International Piano Festival, a conference for young pianists held annually in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Wednesday, 6 August 2025
Need a midweek boost? Here’s some fantastic music.
On this date in classical music history:
Leland Smith, c. 1976. (Photo by Chuck Painter)
It’s the birthdate of American bassoonist, composer, and computer scientist Leland Smith in 1925 in Oakland, California. Smith showed an early aptitude for music and took lessons with composer Darius Milhaud, who was a neighbor, before joining the U.S. Navy in 1943. His music education resumed in 1946 with composition studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and then the Paris Conservatoire, under Olivier Messiaen. Smith made a living as a bassoonist in New York and San Francisco; he was also a teaching assistant to Milhaud at Mills College before beginning his own teaching career at the University of Chicago in 1952, and then Stanford University from 1958. In 1965, Smith joined a Stanford research team on computer synthesized music and developed an input syntax for MUSIC V that he called SCORE. He also was a founder of the Stanford Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA).
Tuesday, 5 August 2025
Listeners, you’ve supported great classical music on The Classical Station since 1978.
We are one of the few stations left that can boast both classical music AND live announcers.
Your donations make that happen. Thank you!
On this date in the history of classical music:
It’s the birthdate of Austrian-Argentine composer and conductor Erich Kleiber in Wieden in 1890. Kleiber was a student at the Prague Conservatory before beginning a career as a conductor, from Darmstadt Court Theater in 1912 to the Berlin State Opera in 1923. In 1933, Kleiber resigned from the Berlin Opera in protest of the Nazi Party and emigrated with his family to Buenos Aires (including his son, future conductor Carlos Kleiber), where he conducted at the Teatro Colón and for other orchestras in South America and worldwide until his death in 1956.
Monday, 4 August 2025
A new week ahead, filled with wonderful music. Let’s do this.
This evening at 7pm ET, join Vince Tillona for Drop the Needle and the warmth of vinyl recordings. This week, the purity of Mozart and the passion of Puccini.
Then at 8pm ET, Monday Night at the Symphony spotlights the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra with Zubin Mehta conducting works by Mozart, Brahms, and pianist Murray Perahia performing Chopin’s Piano Concerto.
Join George Leef on Tuesday during Classical Café for this week’s Legendary Performer:
Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini.
On this date in classical music history:
It’s the birthdate of British trumpeter, composer, and conductor Arthur Butterworth (unrelated to composer George Butterworth) in New Moston, Greater Manchester, in 1923. Butterworth grew up singing in his father’s church choir, accompanied by his mother at the piano; playing in the village brass band; and taking conducting lessons and composing. He spent a few years in the British Army in the 1930s, then won a scholarship for brass performers and saw one of his compositions performed in public (1939). Butterworth entered studies in trumpet, composition, and conducting at the Royal Manchester College of Music (now Royal Northern College of Music) and took private composition lessons with Ralph Vaughan Williams. He was a trumpeter in the Scottish National Orchestra (now Royal Scottish National Orchestra) and in the Hallé, then began teaching at the Huddersfield School of Music and was named principal conductor of the Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra. Over his life, Butterworth wrote symphonies, concerti, and other orchestral works; chamber music; and a lot of works for brass band.