This Week at The Classical Station
by Chrissy Keuper & Mark Schreiner
Saturday and Sunday, 28 February – 1 March 2026
YES! WEEKEND!
Saturday:
Join Peggy Powell at 1pmET for an afternoon of wonderful ballet music on Saturdays on Point and one of the most enduring creations of 19th-century Russian ballet:
Ludwig Minkus’s Don Quixote.
Premiered in 1869 and based on a subplot in the second part of Cervantes’s novel, the ballet tells the love story of Kitri and Basilio with irresistible melodic energy.
At 6pmET, Haydn Jones will be with you for listener requests and special dedications on the Saturday Evening Request Program, always a lovely way to spend a Saturday evening!
Sunday:
We start a new month and keep the great classical music going with Great Sacred Music at 8amET with James Steelmon.
This week, J.S. Bach’s Cantata BWV 127, Herr Jesu Christ, wahr’ Mensch und Gott (Lord Jesus Christ, True Man and God), along with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s gorgeous Missa brevis in F, K 192.
And at 6pmET, Preview! is always filled with wonderful new and recent releases from the world of classical music.
This week, selections from a very special release of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, arranged for two guitars:
Guitarists Thibaut Garcia and Antoine Morinière recorded the album on guitars cut from the same tree AND built especially for this recording.
Friday, 27 February 2026
It’s All-Request Friday and we’re playing listener requests and special dedications all. day. long.
(And tomorrow evening, we’ll do it some more on the Saturday Evening Request Program.)
Want to make a request for next week’s programs? Do that here.
On This Day in Classical Music History:
Gidon Kremer, c. 2021. (Photo by Angie Kremer, courtesy of gidonkremer.net)
A very Happy Birthday to Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer, born in Riga in 1947.
He started learning the violin as a young child, attended Riga Music School, and won the First Prize of the Latvian Republic when he was 16 years old. All of that paved the way for Kremer’s studies at the Moscow Conservatory under legendary violinist David Oistrakh and a long and celebrated career as a legendary violinist, in his own right.
Kremer has made hundreds of appearances all over the world as a soloist and with the world’s best orchestras and greatest conductors; has recorded more than 120 albums, many of them award-winning; and is the founder of Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra, a Grammy-winning ensemble created to support and promote musicians from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
We look forward to many more years of beautiful music from his violin!
Thursday, 26 February 2026
Happy Friday Eve, Listeners!
Tonight on Thursday Night Opera House:
Our month-long look at the greatest tragedies in grand opera concludes with perhaps the most famously tragic plot in the repertoire — Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
Tender-hearted Cio-Cio-San (her name derived from the Japanese word for “butterfly”), awaits the return of U.S. naval lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton, despite being divorced and abandoned by him. When he returns to Nagasaki years later, what began between them as fiery passion turns to intense tragedy.
Our feature is Sir John Barbirolli’s enduring 1966 EMI recording with the orchestra and chorus of the Opera di Roma. The cast includes:
Renata Scotto, soprano, as Cio-Cio-San
Carlo Bergonzi, tenor, as Pinkerton
Tune in at 7pmET for this archival episode, hosted by the late Al Ruocchio.
Wednesday, 25 February 2026
On This Day in Classical Music History:
The last photo of Enrico Caruso, c. 1921 at the Hotel Vesuvio, a few days before his death. (Photo by R. Carbone – Courtesy of Library of Congress)
It’s the birthdate of the first international recording star, Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, who was born in Naples and went on to become the most celebrated and highest-paid operatic tenor of his contemporaries.
Caruso joined his parish choir as a child and had no formal music training until he was 18. Within three years, he made his operatic debut (1894) in Naples at the Teatro Nuovo. Four years after that, he was a singing sensation and was performing all over the world.
He made his American debut in Rigoletto at the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1903, and opened each season there for the next 17 years.
Over his career, Caruso made recordings of about 200 operatic excerpts and songs, many of which are still being published.
Tuesday, 24 February 2026
On This Day in Classical Music History:
Renata Scotto as Mimì in Puccini’s La Bohème, opposite tenor Luciano Pavarotti as Rodolfo, in the inaugural Live from the Met telecast, 1977.
It’s the birthdate of Italian soprano, opera director, and voice teacher Renata Scotto in Savona in 1934. Scotto was legendary for her musicality and talent and was considered one of the preeminent opera singers of her generation.
At 16, Scotto entered music studies at the Milan Conservatory while she made a living by taking jobs as a seamstress and a cleaner. In 1952, she won a competition for a debut at Milan’s Teatro Nuovo and performed the title role of Verdi’s La traviata.
Over the next 40 years, she performed in Italy, then as a leading soprano of the Metropolitan Opera, where she also worked as an opera director.
Monday, 23 February 2026
A brand new week filled with fantastic music!
This week on Drop the Needle, an episode not to be missed! At 7pmET, Vince Tillona will spin a recording of the world’s first million selling artist on the world’s first million selling record: legendary tenor Enrico Caruso singing Vesti la guibba from an original 12-inch, 78 RPM RCA Victor shellac record played on an authentic crank-wound gramophone. (The disc comes from Vince’s collection, and he restored the gramophone to its original analog glory.)
You won’t experience this anywhere else but The Classical Station. Join Vince for this celebration of the birth of the recording industry and Caruso’s 152nd birthday!
Then at 8pmET on Monday Night at the Symphony, Les Arts Florissants has been bringing the Baroque spirit back to life since 1979.
This Paris-based chamber orchestra of period instruments and a small vocal ensemble works hard to recreate the experience of music as it was in the late 1600s and early 1700s.
Tomorrow on Classical Café, George Leef profiles his weekly Legendary Performer: Russian conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky.
And on Wednesday at 11amET, George will give away tickets to Mallarmé Music’s Series Concert: Surviving Inquisition with Forgotten Clefs, tracing the musical journey of Sephardic Jews from the thirteenth century in Alfonso el Sabio’s Castile to Italy in the early seventeenth century.