This Week at The Classical Station
by Chrissy Keuper & Mark Schreiner
Saturday and Sunday, 17 & 18 January 2026
Come spend a weekend with wonderful classical music! Among the highlights:
Saturday at 1pm ET, embrace the beauty of winter and the changing seasons with Peggy Powell and Saturday on Point. Glide onto the ice with Meyerbeer’s The Skaters, feel the drama of Verdi’s ballet music from The Sicilian Vespers, step into a snowy fairy tale with Korngold’s The Snowman, and conclude your journey with Glazunov’s vibrant The Seasons.
At 6pm ET, Haydn Jones has your requests and dedications on the Saturday Evening Request Program. (Make someone’s day! Request beautiful music and add a special dedication right here)
Help get your Sunday off to a fine and peaceful start at 8am ET with James Steelmon and Great Sacred Music, this week featuring Felix Mendelssohn’s Psalm 42, Wie der Hirsch schreit.
That evening, Preview! is packed with new and recent recordings from the classical world, including a Grammy-nominated performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 by Yo-Yo Ma, Emmanuel Ax, and Leonidas Kavakos and the Nash Ensemble’s performance of Claude Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Violin, and Harp. Join us at 6pm ET.
Friday, 16 January 2026
Happy All-Request Friday!
We’re sharing listener requests and dedications from 10am to 8pm ET.
JOIN US to hear what other listeners chose for us and make your own requests HERE.
On this day in Classical Music History:
Roberta Bitgood, c. 1931. (Photo courtesy of the American Guild of Organists)
American organist, composer, choir director, and pioneer of 20th-century church music Roberta Bitgood was born January 16, 1908 in New London, Connecticut. Following a childhood filled with violin lessons, Bitgood attended Williams Memorial Institute; she was concert master and assistant conductor for the school orchestra and she took organ lessons and performed in churches during the summer months. She majored in music at Connecticut College for Women (focused on violin and organ performance) and continued her studies at the Guilmant Organ School, while also scoring the highest marks in the country on the Fellowship exams with the American Guild of Organists. She went on to the Teacher’s College at Columbia University and became the first woman in the U.S. to receive a doctoral degree in sacred music at Union Theological Seminary.
Bitgood spent her entire career as an organist in churches and synagogues, as a teacher, and as a composer of sacred music, anthems, cantatas and hymns. She also served as Director of Music for the official chorus of the State Federation of Women’s Clubs; as founder of a number of local Glee Clubs at the YMCA and YWCA; as featured organ recitalist at the New York World’s Fair in 1939; and as the first woman national president of the American Guild of Organists (1975).
She officially retired in 1976, returning to Connecticut and working as an organist and composer until her death in 2007.
Thursday, 15 January 2026
It’s Friday Eve!
We celebrate this evening with Thursday Night Opera House, with Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Opera, the Berlin Philharmonic, and amazing soloists in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s masterpiece, Don Giovanni.
Join us at 7pm ET for the opera!
Today in Classical Music History:
A very Happy Birthday to Canadian oboist Colin Maier, born on this day in Calgary in 1976.
Maier is known for combining his disparate passions—including music, aerial gymnastics, stunt-acting and martial arts—into his live performances. If you watched the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, you saw him portray the legendary “Devil Fiddler,” flying in a blue canoe across the arena. Maier joined Quartetto Gelato, a significant international classical touring ensemble, in 2009. You can hear a virtuoso performance by Maier tonight on the Classical Station. Be listening shortly after midnight Eastern during Sleepers, Awake! for Poulenc’s Sonata for Oboe and Piano.
Wednesday, 14 January 2026
Today in Classical Music History:
British-American composer, singer and teacher Clara Kathleen Barnett Rogers was born in the Cotswolds in 1844.
Her household was familiar with musical fame:
Her mother Eliza was a well-known singer. Her father was John Barnett, the composer often called the “Father of English Opera.” A cousin was the German composer Giacomo Meyerbeer.
She excelled at the Leipzig Conservatory and struck up a close friendship with classmate Arthur Sullivan. From 1863, she appeared on opera stages across Europe as the soprano Clara Doria.
Her 1878 marriage to Boston attorney Henry Monroe Rogers brought her to the United States. While in America, she composed nearly 100 songs, taught singing at the New England Conservatory of Music and published six treatises on pedagogy. She died aged 87 in Boston in 1931.
Tuesday, 13 January 2026
Today in Classical Music History:
Vasily Kalinnikov, c. 1910. (Photographer unknown – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
In 1866, composer Vasily Kalinnikov was born in Russia. Despite a short life beset by serious illness, Kalinnikov’s luxuriant music—especially his two symphonies—won him a permanent place in the Russian repertoire.
His life of promise and tragedy began with small-town origins. His father was a police officer. With early evidence of musical talent, he studied at the Oryol Seminary and the Moscow Philharmonic Society School (he couldn’t afford the Moscow Conservatory’s tuition).
Just as his talent was recognized with appointments as conductor of the Maly Theater and the Moscow Italian Opera, he developed tuberculosis. Escaping to the Crimea’s warmer climate, he spent his final years there composing. He completed the two works upon which his reputation rests (Symphony No. 1 in G minor and Symphony No. 2 in A) before he died in 1901 at age 34.
You can hear some of this marvelous music today, right here on the Classical Station. Tune in to Concert Hall at 8 pm ET to listen to the Symphony No. 2 in A. Groundbreaking conductor Veronika Dudarova (1916-2009) directs the Symphony Orchestra of Russia.
Monday, 12 January 2026
It’s a brand new week, filled with wonderful music. Thank you for listening!
Tonight:
Wrap yourself in the warmth of vinyl with Drop the Needle at 7pm ET, as Vince Tillona brings you a rarely-heard full recording of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in a recording that includes Mahler’s long discarded 2nd movement, known as the Blumine (Flower) movement.
And at 8pm ET, Monday Night at the Symphony features the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
Tomorrow:
George Leef spotlights his weekly Legendary Performer on Classical Café: Dutch conductor and recorder/flute virtuoso, Frans Brüggen.
Janeba Kanneh-Mason, pianist. (Publicity photo by Johanna-Berghorn, Sony Music Entertainment)
And on Wednesday, George will give away tickets to see pianist Janeba Kanneh-Mason and the North Carolina Symphony performing an all-Mozart program, including Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23.
Tune in between 11am and noon ET to win!
Today in Classical Music History:
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, c. 1906. (Published in Monographien moderner musiker, Vol. 1, p. 1. Leipzig by C. F. Kahnt, 1906 – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Italian composer Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari was born in 1876. Born in Venice, the son of an accomplished German painter, Wolf-Ferrari found success in both drawing and musical composition. He was noted for his rapid success and productivity, making thousands of drawings, writing music for strings and orchestra, and composing several operas. With the 1903 premiere of the choral-orchestral cantata La Vita Nuova, Op. 9, in Munich, he became famous overnight—and one of the few artists of the period to bridge the Italian-German cultural divide in classical music. Throughout the early 20th century, he was a busy composer, shuttling among premieres in Berlin, Dresden, Venice, Milan and Rome. In 1913, he traveled to America to work with Toscanini to stage his opera Le Donne Curiose at the Metropolitan Opera. With the help of friends, he spent World War I in Switzerland in relative safety, but suffered under Nazism during World War II, living reclusively in Munich. He died unexpectedly in his native Venice in 1948.