This Week at The Classical Station

This Week at The Classical Station

by Chrissy Keuper

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Saturday and Sunday, 8-9 November 2025

Welcome to the weekend, All! Here’s your soundtrack.

 

This weekend:

Join Peggy Powell at 1pm ET for Saturday On Point, our weekly spotlight on classical music for dancers on the stage. This week, we’ll hear a complicated tale of humans, elves, trolls, and a sorceress through the music of Niels Gade: Et folkesagn (A Folk Tale).

 

Then at 6pm ET, Haydn Jones has all of your favorites and special dedications on the Saturday Evening Request Program.

Here’s the playlist, and feel free to make requests and dedications for next week right here.

 

Get your sacred Sunday morning started at 8am ET with James Steelmon on Great Sacred Music and devotional thoughts accompanied by sacred works, including Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s monumental Grand Mass in C minor, K. 427.

 

And at 6pm ET, Preview! spotlights the latest classical recordings. Seth Taylor will be with you this week with recordings by the Ariel Quartet performing Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 3, Op. 18, and cellist Raphael Wallfisch with pianist Ed Spanjaard performing Impressions by Henriette Hilda Bosmans.

 

On these dates in the history of classical music:

Composer Richard Stoker was born November 8, 1938, in Castleford, Yorkshire, England, and began playing the piano and composing in his early childhood. Stoker was admitted to the Royal Academy of Music in 1958 as a student of Lennox Berkeley, where he won several prizes, including the 1962 Mendelssohn Scholarship, which allowed him to study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. In 1963, he returned to England and joined the faculty of the RAM, where he was a Professor of Composition for more than 20 years. He was also a founding member of the Royal Academy of Music Guild; a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music (FRAM); and an Associate of the Royal College of Music (ARCM). Stoker wrote mostly orchestral works, including the orchestral overture Antic Hay four symphonies; a piano concerto; works for guitar (which was his favorite instrument after the piano); two operas; choral works (including his cantata, Ecce homo); and quite a number of chamber works.

And Happy Birthday to pianist Nazzareno Carusi, born November 9, 1968, in Celano, Italy. Carusi won the Italian Music Conservatories national competition in 1990 and became the nation’s youngest professor of chamber music; he now teaches at the Conservatory of Bari. He was the first classical pianist to contract with commercial television company Mediaset in 2010; he has performed and recorded with some of the world’s finest orchestras and chamber ensembles; has collaborated with pop and jazz musicians, as well; and was named “a superlative pianist and a musician of the highest value” by conductor Riccardo Muti. Carusi was forced to retire from performance in 2018 because of vertebral fractures, but he turned his energy toward influencing Italy’s government through the performing arts, and serving as Board Member and Artistic Committee Member of the Teatro alla Scala’s Philharmonic Orchestra; President of the Conservatory of L’Aquila; Vice President of the Foundation Orchestra Regionale Toscana of Florence; and artistic director of the Paganini Competition.

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Friday, 7 November 2025

Happy Friday, All!

 

Tune in for All-Request Friday, filled with your requests and special dedications (and we’ll do it again on the Saturday Evening Request Program).

 

The playlists are here
Make your requests/dedications here

 

On this date in the history of classical music:

Happy Birthday to mezzo-soprano Judith Forst, born in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada, in 1943. Forst studied music at the University of British Columbia before winning the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 1968. She debuted at the Met later that year at the age of 24, and went on to sing in many of the company’s productions until she returned to Canada in 1975. Forst also sang with the San Francisco Opera, the Vancouver Opera Company, and the Edmonton, Dallas, Fort Worth, Manitoba, Miami, New York City, New Orleans, Santa Fe, Seattle, Southern Alberta (Calgary), and Portland opera companies. She is an Officer of the Order of Canada (1991) and the Order of British Columbia (2001), and is an ambassador of the Canadian Music Centre.

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Thursday, 6 November 2025

It’s almost Friday, Listeners!

 

We celebrate at 7pm ET with Thursday Night Opera House, featuring a 1997-98 recording of Yves Abel conducting the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, the Choeur de l”opera de Bordeaux, and exceptional soloists in Jules Massenet’s Thaïs. The setting is 4th-century Alexandria. The devout monk Athanaël (Thomas Hampson) attempts to convert beautiful courtesan Thaïs (Renee Fleming) from a life of pleasure to a life of the spirit. Join Dr. Jay Pierson for this beautiful opera.

 

On this day in classical music history:

It’s the birthdate of cellist and composer Jean-Baptiste Bréval, born in Paris, France, in 1753. Bréval studied cello throughout his childhood and teenage years and was a well-known teacher of the instrument by 1774. He published his first works (a collection of string quartets) the next year and then became a member of the Société Académique des Enfants d’Apollon and an orchestra member of the famous Concerts Spirituel (one of the first public concert series) and of the Théâtre Feydeau. Bréval helped run the Concerts de la rue de Cléry and performed with the Paris Opera orchestra until he retired from the orchestra in 1816. It is rumored that he taught at the Conservatoire de Paris (unverified) and that his compositions were a part of studies at the Conservatoire (verified). His Sonata in C major Op. 40, No. 1, a classic of the cello repertoire, was one of the first full sonatas learned by the conservatory’s cello students, and his Traité du Violoncelle (a study method for the cello published in 1804) was likely the first of its kind.

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Wednesday, 5 November 2025

Hello, All! Join us for wonderful music for your Wednesday.

 

On this date in the history of classical music:

It’s the birthdate of Hungarian-French pianist György Cziffra, born in Budapest in 1921. Cziffra was ultimately considered one of the 20th century’s greatest virtuoso pianists and was introduced to the piano by his sister; when she practiced, he would mimic her and became a gifted improviser as a result. His first job (at age five) was as a pianist in a local circus. Cziffra entered the Franz Liszt Academy in 1930, where he studied until 1941, when he was conscripted into the Hungarian Army. He was sent to the Russian front and was captured and held as a prisoner of war. When the war ended, he performed in Budapest bars and clubs; toured with a jazz band from 1947 to 1950; and built his reputation as a virtuoso pianist in both classical and jazz. Cziffra and his family escaped from Hungary in 1956, landing in Vienna; he debuted in Paris and London soon after and performed throughout free Europe. He founded the Cziffra Foundation In 1977 to support young musicians.

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Tuesday, 4 November 2025

A good day to all of you, Listeners! Here’s your soundtrack for a grand Tuesday.

 

On this date in classical music history:

A very Happy Birthday to Russian-Australian pianist and composer Elena Kats-Chernin, born in 1957 in Tashkent, Uzbek SSR (now the capital of Uzbekistan). Kats-Chernin moved to Yaroslavl as a young child and studied composition at the Sobinov Conservatory; the Gnessin State Musical College; moved to Australia in 1975 to study at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music; and then to Germany where she composed for the nation’s state theaters and became active in theatre and ballet. She returned to Australia in 1994 and has written operas, ballets, piano concerti, and orchestral and chamber works. Australian TV channel ABC Classic listed Kats-Chernin as the most popular female composer in their top-100 countdown in 2025.

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Monday, 3 November 2025

Listeners, we thank you from the bottom of our classical-music-loving hearts for supporting The Classical Station since 1978.

It was wonderful to hear from so many of you during the Fall Drive!

If you missed out on calling us to donate, you may donate here anytime.
You may also text FALL25 to 707070 (you’ll receive a secure link for donating).

Your support is everything to us, and we are honored to be able to bring you this fine music.

 

 

Wrap yourself in the warmth of vinyl at 7pm ET with Vince Tillona on Drop the Needle, this week featuring works from the old world and the new world.

 

 

At 8pm ET, Monday Night at the Symphony is our spotlight on the recordings of the world’s great orchestras. This week features the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. See you at the symphony!

 

 

Tomorrow, tune into Classical Café with George Leef for this week’s Legendary performer, cellist Pierre Fournier.

 

And on Wednesday, George will give away two tickets (between 11am and noon ET) to the Triangle Wind Ensemble’s From the Highlands to the Shire. Tune in and win!

 

On this date in classical music history:

It’s the birthdate of Italian composer Vincenzo Bellini in 1801 in Catania. Bellini was soon recognized as a child prodigy in a family of musicians; was apparently singing arias by the time he was 18 months old; and began studying music theory and the piano at 2 and 3 years of age, respectively. Bellini was still a very young child when he began composing. His family petitioned the city leaders in Catania to provide Bellini with a stipend to pay for his music studies at the Real Collegio di Musica di San Sebastiano in Naples; over the next several years, he made his name as a talented and internationally famous composer, especially of operas, and a powerful influence on his contemporaries and the composers that followed him (Chopin and Liszt, to name a couple).