This Week at The Classical Station
by Chrissy Keuper
Saturday and Sunday, 27-28 September 2025
We’ve made it to the weekend, All! The great music continues.
Here’s what’s on 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’s featured ballet is Don Quixote by Léon Minkus.
At 6pm ET, Haydn Jones will have your requests and dedications on the Saturday Evening Request Program.
The playlist is right here
Make requests and dedications for next week’s programs right here
Start your sacred Sunday morning at 8am ET with James Steelmon and Great Sacred Music, featuring Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Sacred Service.
And at 6pm ET, Preview! features new and recent releases in the world of classical music, including the Ariel Quartet performing Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 1 in F, Op. 18, and the Malmo Opera Orchestra and pianist Han Chen with the Piano Concerto in One Movement in D minor by Florence Price.
On these dates in the history of classical music:
Josephine Barstow, c. 2021. (Photo by Charlotte Graham)
A very Happy Birthday to British soprano Josephine Barstow, born September 27, 1940, in Sheffield. Barstow studied at the University of Birmingham and made her professional debut in 1964 with an opera touring company called Opera for All; the next year, she received a scholarship to study at the London Opera Centre. Her long career includes performances with many of the world’s leading opera companies, including Sadler’s Wells Opera Company, the Welsh National Opera, the Royal Opera, the Glyndebourne Festival, the English National Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Vienna State Opera, the Bayreuth Festival, and Opera North.
Vivian Fine, c. 1975. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
American composer Vivian Fine was born September 28, 1913, in Chicago, and remains an important figure among American classical composers. Fine was a piano prodigy and the youngest student ever to receive a scholarship to the Chicago Musical College at age five; she had composed her first work by age thirteen and made her professional debut as a composer at age sixteen with her Solo for Oboe and Four Pieces for Two Flutes. When she was 18, Fine moved to New York and joined Aaron Copland’s Young Composers Group, then cofounded the American Composers Alliance in 1937. Over her 70-year career, Fine composed nearly continuously while also performing as a celebrated pianist. She wrote more than 140 compositions and she is best known for her chamber music, though she also wrote orchestral and choral works. She also taught composition for much of her career at New York University (1945-48); Juilliard (1948); SUNY Potsdam (1951); and Bennington College in Vermont (1964-1987), and received many awards that included the Guggenheim Fellowship; grants from the Ford, Rockefeller, Ditson, Woolley, Koussevitsky, Readers’ Digest, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts; and she was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1980.
Friday, 26 September 2025
Listeners, we’re playing your requests and special dedications all day today on All-Request Friday (and we’ll be doing it again tomorrow evening on the Saturday Evening Request Program).
I’d like to see what’s on the playlist!
How do I make a request for next week’s shows?
On this date in the history of classical music:
Salvatore Accardo
A very Happy Birthday to Italian violinist and conductor Salvatore Accardo, born in 1941 in Turin. Accardo was an early violin student in Naples and made his professional performance debut at age 13 before winning the city of Genoa’s first Paganini Competition in 1958. He continued his studies at Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena as his performance career took off, leading to performances and recording sessions with many orchestras and chamber groups into the 1970s, when he founded the Settimane Musicali Internazionali in Naples and the Cremona String Festival; led the Italian chamber orchestra I Musici; and joined the faculty of the Accademia where he studied. Accardo cofounded the Walter Stauffer Academy in 1986 and founded the Accardo Quartet in 1992, and he remains a celebrated performer and conductor. He is especially renowned for his interpretations of the compositions of famed violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini.
Thursday, 25 September 2025
A very Happy Friday Eve to you all!
We celebrate with Thursday Night Opera House, featuring a 1995 recording of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s beautiful and tragic take on the Greek myth of Orphée et Eurydice, performed by the Chorus and Orchestra of the San Francisco Opera and some fantastic soloists, under the direction of conductor Donald Runnicles.
Join Dr. Jay Pierson at 7pm ET.
On this day in classical music history:
Jenö Takács.
It’s the birthdate of Austro-Hungarian pianist and composer Jenö Takács in Cinfalva in 1902. Takács studied piano, composition, and musicology at Vienna’s Academy of Music and Performing Arts and the University of Vienna, then toured and performed in Germany, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. From 1927-1932, he was on the piano faculty and a researcher of Arab and Egyptian music at Cairo, Egypt’s conservatory of music, then moved to the University of the Philippines Conservatory of Music as a professor of piano and composition while also performing in Japan, China, and Hong Kong. Takács spent the rest of his life in music education (as director of the Conservatory in Pécs, Hungary; visiting professor at the conservatories of Geneva and Lausanne; and professor of piano and composition at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music until his retirement in 1970), performing around the world, and composing. He is the namesake of the Takács Quartet and is also among the longest-lived composers in history: Takács was 103 years old when he died in 2005.
Wednesday, 24 September 2025
We’ve made it to Wednesday. Need a push? Beautiful music helps.
On this date in the history of classical music:
Leonard Salzedo. (Photo by Douglas Copeland – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of British composer Leonard Salzedo in Stamford Hill, East London, in 1921. Salzedo was an early violin student (under William Lloyd Webber) and was composing by the time he was 13 years old. He was a violin and composition student at the Royal College of Music and composed his first formal work (String Quartet No. 1, Op. 1) while he was a student. As soon as he graduated in 1944, Salzedo worked as a freelance composer and as a violinist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic (where he was also assistant to conductor Sir Thomas Beecham. He went on to serve as music director of the Ballet Rambert (which commissioned his first ballet, The Fugitive) and the City Ballet of London, and principal conductor with the Scottish Ballet until 1986, when he finally became a full-time composer. Salzedo wrote more than 150 orchestral works that included his ballets and concertos, as well as compositions for voice and piano; string quartets; music for brass and percussion ensembles; and film scores.
Tuesday, 23 September 2025
The Classical Station has been 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:
Soulima Stravinsky, c. 1934. (Photo by George Hoyningen-Huene – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of Swiss-American pianist, composer, and musicologist Soulima Stravinsky, born in Lausanne in 1910 (third child of composer Igor Stravinsky). Stravinsky began his early studies in piano, then studied composition in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. He performed and recorded his father’s works in the 1930s; spent time in the US late in that decade; and joined the French army through World War II and then moved to the US in 1948. Stravinsky was a faculty member of the University of Illinois School of Music from 1950-1978 while performing as a pianist and working on his own compositions and transcribing and editing music. His compositions include works for piano, harpsichord, cello and piano, and string quartets.
Monday, 22 September 2025
It is our privilege to bring you the greatest hits in classical music, all the time, everywhere.
Thank you so much for your support since 1978.
Join us at 7pm ET for Drop the Needle and the warmth of vinyl, with recordings of works by George Frideric Handel, a Gershwin premiere, and a Beethoven surprise.
At 8pm ET, Monday Night at the Symphony features the New York Philharmonic observing Rosh Hashanah with Leonard Bernstein conducting his own Chichester Psalms; Rudolf Serkin also performs Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor.” See you at the symphony!
On Tuesday, tune into Classical Café with George Leef for this week’s Legendary Performer:
Czech conductor and composer Rafael Kubelik.
And on Wednesday (between 11am and noon ET), George will give away tickets to see Triangle Brass Band’s Storytelling.
More information is here. Tune in to win!
On this date in classical music history:
Henryk Szeryng (left) with Artur Rubinstein in Hollywood, c. 1960. (Tully Potter Collection – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of Polish-Mexican violinist Henryk Szeryng in Warsaw in 1918. Szeryng began studying piano with his mother at age five and began violin lessons at age seven. He was 11 when he began violin studies with Carl Flesch in Berlin and was admitted to the Conservatoire de Paris where he studied violin and graduated with a first prize in 1937 (and continued composition studies with Nadia Boulanger until 1939); he had already made his virtuoso debut a few years before with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra. At the advent of World War II, Szeryng (who was fluent in seven languages) was asked to serve as liaison officer and interpreter to the premier of the Polish government in exile, Władysław Sikorski, while also performing in more than 300 concerts for Allied troops all over the world. On a 1941 mission to Mexico to find new homes for thousands of Polish refugees, Szeryng fell in love with the country; he was eventually named head of the string department at the National University of Mexico and became a citizen. He was named Mexican Cultural Ambassador in 1960 and Honorary Director of the Conservatory of Music in Mexico City in 1966.