This Week at The Classical Station
by Chrissy Keuper
Saturday and Sunday, 20-21 September 2025
It’s the weekend! Come fill it with some fantastic music.
On the menu for this weekend:
Join Peggy Powell at 1pm ET for Saturday On Point, your weekly spotlight on classical music for dancers on the stage. This week, a recording of the Malmo Symphony Orchestra performing Hugo Alfven’s three-act ballet, The Mountain King.
At 6pm ET, Haydn Jones has more of your requests and dedications on the Saturday Evening Request Program.
The playlist is right here
You can make requests and dedications for next week’s programs here
Start your sacred Sunday morning at 7:30am ET with Sing For Joy from St. Olaf College, followed at 8am ET by James Steelmon and Great Sacred Music, featuring the Holland Boys’ Choir, the Russian Chamber Philharmonic St. Petersburg, and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra & Choir with works by Ernest Bloch, Darius Milhaud, Max Bruch, and others.
And at 6pm ET, Seth Taylor is filling in for Tom Hayakawa on Preview!, highlighting new and recent classical releases. This week, recordings from the London Symphony under Gianandrea Noseda with Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1, the Classical Symphony.
On these dates in the history of classical music:
Nils Frahm, c. 2021. (Courtesy of Nils Frahm)
A very Happy Birthday to German keyboardist and composer Nils Frahm, born September 20, 1982 in Hamburg. Frahm was introduced to music through his father (a photographer and designer for ECM Records) and studied classical piano. He was introduced to mixing boards and music production in school and combines classical and electronic music in his recordings and performances, both solo and collaborative.
Yuji Takahashi. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
And a very Happy Birthday to Japanese pianist and composer Yūji Takahashi, born in Tokyo on September 21, 1938. Takahashi attended Toho Gakuen School of Music and made his public debut as a pianist in 1960, then received a Ford Foundation grant to study in West Berlin and a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship to study in New York. He is known for his works for voice and traditional Japanese instruments and for his recordings of works by contemporary composers, including John Cage and Toru Takemitsu. Takahashi has also performed as a soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, and a number of other premiere orchestras, and he taught piano at Indiana University and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Friday, 19 September 2025
It’s Friday, Listeners!
That means it’s time to play what YOU have chosen for All-Request Friday (and we’ll do it again tomorrow on the Saturday Evening Request Program).
Join us to hear what you’ve chosen.
What’s on the playlist?
I want to make a request for next week’s shows!
On this date in the history of classical music:
Blanche Thebom, c. 1954. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of American mezzo-soprano Blanche Thebom, born in 1919 in Monessen, Pennsylvania, and raised in Canton, Ohio. Thebom was a ballet student in childhood (and throughout her life) and a singer in her church choir. She was on a ship with her parents to visit family in Sweden when her singing was overheard by pianist Kosti Vehanen, who was the accompanist and vocal coach for Marian Anderson. Vehanen was highly impressed and arranged for Thebom to receive voice training and to sign on with a talent manager in New York. Her first appearance as a soloist was in 1941 with the Philadelphia Orchestra and University of Pennsylvania Glee Club under Eugene Ormandy, which set up a three-year tour of the U.S. in which she sang in concerts and recitals, and then her professional opera debut in 1944 with the Metropolitan Opera (an association that lasted 22 years). Thebom was among the first American opera singers to be internationally famous, and she was praised for her velvety and dramatic voice and diverse repertoire; she appeared with many opera companies all over the world and also appeared in films. She retired from performance in 1967; worked in Atlanta as an opera director; and taught voice both privately and as music faculty of the University of Arkansas and San Francisco State University. Thebom was also a co-founder of the Opera Arts Training Program of the San Francisco Girls Chorus and served on the board of the Metropolitan Opera for nearly 40 years.
Thursday, 18 September 2025
A very merry Friday Eve to you, Listeners!
We celebrate at 7pm ET with Thursday Night Opera House** and a 1981 recording of Claudio Scimone conducting I Solisti Veneti, the Cora Filarmonico di Paraga, and legendary soloists in Giocchino Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri (The Italian Girl in Algiers).
**Archival broadcast from 2006 by late TNOH host Al Ruocchio.
On this day in classical music history:
Francesca Caccini is widely believed to be the subject of The Lute Player by Orazio Gentileschi, c. 1612-1620. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of Italian singer, lutenist, and composer Francesca Caccini in 1587 in Florence. Caccini received her early education in classical and modern languages, literature, mathematics, and music, and is known to have been an accomplished singer who performed for the Medici court. Although only a bit of her music survives, Caccini was documented as a prolific composer and her opera-ballet La liberazione di Ruggiero is believed to be the oldest opera composed by a woman. She was a teacher, singer, rehearsal coach, and composer in the Medici court until at least 1641.
Wednesday, 17 September 2025
Wednesday = Wonderful Music, right here.
On this date in the history of classical music:
Désiré Emile Inghelbrecht. (Photo year and photographer unknown – Courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France)
It’s the birthdate of French composer and conductor Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht in 1880 in Paris. Inghelbrecht began studies in violin at the Conservatoire de Paris when he was seven years old, but was expelled as a teenager for performing in local cafes. The move only inspired Inghelbrecht as a performer and he was named second violin in the Concerts de l’Opéra orchestra and a substitute conductor for his friend Pierre Monteux, then conductor of the Concerts Berlioz. Inghelbrecht was appointed as director of the new Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 1913; founded the Concerts Pleyel which focused on music of the 16th to 18th centuries; was named music director of the Opéra-Comique in 1924; conducted the Concerts Pasdeloup and the Opera d’Alger; and was asked to form a national radio orchestra in 1934, which became the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française (ONF) and eventually the Orchestre Nationale de France. He was also conductor of the Opéra Nationale de Paris from 1945 to 1950; a radio broadcaster; and a close friend of Claude Debussy. As a composer, Inghelbrecht was largely self-taught and his oeuvre of around 60 works includes operettas and opera-ballets; orchestral works; and compositions for solo piano and piano four-hands.
Tuesday, 16 September 2025
Listeners, thank you for keeping The Classical Station on the air with great classical music since 1978, 24 hours a day, and always with a live announcer.
Please help sustain this wonderful music and keep it accessible to people all over the planet.
Donate here or text CLASSICAL to 707070 and we’ll send you a secure link!
On this date in classical music history:
It’s the birthdate of German Benedictine abbess, composer, and patron saint of musicians and writers Hildegard von Bingen, born in Böckelheim, West Franconia (Germany) in 1098. Bingen received her early education at the Benedictine cloister of Disibodenberg and was 15 when she took the vows to remain in the priory (and was named prioress in 1136). In her 40s, Bingen began to speak of the visions she had experienced since childhood; after these visions were authenticated, as it were, by a theological committee, a monk was assigned to help her write them down. The result was Scivias, a written record of 26 of her prophetic visions. In the late 1140s, Bingen founded a new convent at Rupertsberg, where she continued to record her visions and compose poetry and music (including the Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum (Symphony of the Harmony of Heavenly Revelations)). She also wrote on medicine, natural history, and other scientific observations, and apparently invented her own language. Bingen was also a traveling evangelist who was considered a saint and a miracle-worker during her lifetime. She was formally canonized in 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI and was also one of only four women ever proclaimed as a Doctor of the Church (a group of saints whose writings are considered doctrinal).
Monday, 15 September 2025
Welcome to the new week, All. We’ve got things underway with wonderful music.
Join us at 8pm ET for Monday Night at the Symphony features recordings of the Columbia Symphony Orchestra performing works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Vincent D’Indy, and other great composers under the direction of Bruno Walter, Thomas Schippers, and Aaron Copland.
On Tuesday, tune into Classical Café with George Leef for this week’s Legendary Performer:
Polish violinist and composer Henryk Wieniawski.
And on Wednesday (between 11am and noon ET), George will give away tickets to see Oak City Brass: Old, New, Borrowed, Blue (part of the Halle Cultural Arts Center’s Classical Concert Series).
Tune in to win!
On this date in classical music history:
Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos conducting the New York Philharmonic, c. 2012. (Photo by Getty Images – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of Spanish conductor and composer Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos in 1933 in Burgos. He was an early student of the violin via his mother and he was concertmaster of the town’s orchestra by the age of 14. He continued conservatory studies in violin, piano, and composition in both Bilbao and Madrid and was serving in the Spanish Army when he began conducting. Frühbeck later graduated from Munich’s Hochschule für Musik; received the Richard Strauss Prize; and began his long career as a principal conductor of various orchestras with the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra (1958-1962). Burgos went on to conduct and record with many orchestras, including the Spanish National Orchestra, the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra, Rundfunkorchester Berlin, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony, and others. He received the 2011 Conductor of the Year award from Musical America and retired in 2014 when he was conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra.