This Week at The Classical Station
by Chrissy Keuper
Saturday, 16 November and Sunday, 17 November 2024
Yes! Weekend.
Tune into The Classical Station for your weekend listening needs.
Saturday:
Join Haydn Jones at 6pm ET for all your favorites and dedications on the Saturday Evening Request Program. (Make requests for next week here.)
Sunday:
This week’s Great Sacred Music highlights the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with performances by the Academy of Ancient Music with soprano Dame Emma Kirkby, and the Mozart Amsterdam Players with organist Peter Hurford, and the featured work is Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor, K. 626. The program will also include music by composers who influenced Mozart (like Johann Sebastian and Christian Philipp Emannuel Bach) and by his students (like Johann Nepomuk Hummel).
Join Mick Anderson at 8am ET, right after Sing for Joy.
And Preview! spotlights new releases in the classical music world (including mandolinist Alon Sariel’s Plucked Bach II and pianist Tiffany Poon’s Diaries: Schumann), and features Rob Kennedy’s interview with double-bassist Edwin Barker about his latest recording, Basso Profundo. Join us at 6pm ET for new takes on old favorites (and maybe some things you’ve never heard before).
On these dates classical music history:
Anton Rubinstein, c. 1890s. (Photo by C. St. Eneret – Finnish Heritage Agency, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Russian pianist, conductor, and composer Anton Rubinstein was born November 16, 1829, in Vikhvatinets in what was then the Russian Empire (and is now Ofatinți in the Republic of Moldova). Rubinstein’s mother gave him piano lessons at age five (and also taught his younger brother, Nikolai), until pianist Alexander Villoing took Rubinstein on as a student. Villoing took him to Paris to enroll at the Conservatoire de Paris; he wasn’t admitted, but he performed in Paris for audiences that included Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt; both were impressed. Rubinstein embarked on a concert tour of Europe and Western Russia before returning to Moscow in 1843 and doing a Russian tour, including a performance in Saint Petersburg for Tsar Nicholas I and the imperial family. The next year, Rubinstein returned to Germany where he met and gained the support of Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer and studied composition and theory with Siegfried Dehn and Adolf Bernhard Marx; he was also spending a lot of time composing. He was forced to return to Russia with the Revolution of 1848 and became a key figure in the musical culture of Saint Petersburg as a teacher and he performed and conducted his own compositions (including his Symphony No. 2, The Ocean). Rubinstein once again set out on a European concert tour in 1854, reestablishing himself as a virtuoso and cementing his reputation as a composer of note. With the support of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, he founded the Russian Musical Society (RMS) in 1859 and the Saint Petersburg Conservatory (Russia’s first music school) in 1862; he was also the Conservatory’s first director. He began to find major success as a composer with his Piano Concerto No. 4 (1864), and what is still his best-known opera, The Demon (1871). Dissension among the faculty of the Conservatory led Rubinstein to resign and tour again, mainly performing works of other composers. In 1872 and 1873, Steinway & Sons piano company hired Rubinstein to give 200 concerts in the U.S. He gave 215 concerts (with as many as three concerts a day), and said he refused to do anything like it again; Steinway & Sons paid him $200 per concert (in gold), however, which meant financial security for the rest of his life. He continued to tour and conduct and returned to the Conservatory in 1887 to overhaul the school and improve standards. Rubinstein resigned again in 1891 over demands that admittance and prizes be awarded due to ethnic quotas instead of merit. He returned to Germany, settled in Dresden, gave concerts in Germany and Austria, and taught a few students, including Josef Hofmann. His final concert was in 1894 in Saint Petersburg and he died later that year. Throughout Rubinstein’s life, his contemporaries noted a striking physical resemblance to Ludwig van Beethoven (Franz Liszt referred to him as “Van II”) and many audience members professed physical reactions to his performance style, mostly amazement and pleasure, though Clara Schumann complained that his “wild noise” often overshadowed the other musicians performing with him. Nevertheless, or perhaps as a result, Rubinstein is remembered foremost as one of the greatest 19th-century keyboard virtuosos and as an educator (most notably as the composition teacher of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky); but he also composed 20 operas, five piano concertos, six symphonies, and many works for chamber ensemble and for solo piano.
Charles Mackerras, c. 1995. (Photographer unknown – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
And Australian conductor Charles Mackerras was born November 17, 1925, in Schenectady, New York, to Australian parents who returned to Sydney when he was two years old. In his childhood, Mackerras studied violin and flute, began setting poems to music, and wrote a piano concerto, all before the age of 12. While a student at Sydney Grammar School, Mackerras began composing operas and conducting student performances; he attended St Aloysius College in Sydney and performed in the school’s Gilbert and Sullivan productions; then at age 16, he attended the NSW State Conservatorium of Music, studying oboe, piano, and composition. Mackerras began performing professionally in 1941; older musicians were called up to fight in World War II, but he was too young to join the military. He joined the ABC Sydney Orchestra in 1943 under conductor Malcolm Sargent, and the next year, at age 19, he was appointed principal oboist. In 1947, he left for England to pursue a career as a conductor, first joining Sadler’s Wells Theatre (now the English National Opera) as an oboist and cor anglais player, then winning a British Council Scholarship to study conducting for a year at the Prague Academy of Music. He discovered the operas of Leoš Janáček while he was a student in Prague, marking the beginning of his obsession with the composer’s music; Mackerras later said his work with Janáček’s music was his single most important legacy (he was also an authority on the operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and on the comic operas of Gilbert & Sullivan). In 1948, he rejoined Sadler’s Wells as an assistant conductor, then principal conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra from 1954 to 1956, and his conducting career continued until the end of his life, with the South Australian Symphony Orchestra; London’s Covent Garden; the Hamburg State Opera; the Metropolitan Opera; the English National Opera; the Sydney Symphony Orchestra; the Welsh National Opera; the Scottish Chamber Orchestra; the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; the San Francisco Opera; the Orchestra of St. Luke’s; the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; the Philharmonia Orchestra; the Czech Philharmonic; the BBC Symphony Orchestra; the Vienna Philharmonic; and others. His final public performance was as conductor at Glyndebourne in 2010; he died one month later. Mackerras also arranged music for orchestra; composed film scores; made many, many, recordings (from 1950 to 2009); served as Honorary President of the Edinburgh International Festival Society; was the President of Trinity College of Music, London; and won numerous awards and held several honorable titles.
Friday, 15 November 2024
Happy Friday, Listeners!
It’s All-Request Friday and we’re playing your favorites and dedications! (And we’ll do it again tomorrow on the Saturday Evening Request Program).
Here’s the playlist for today’s selections, and if there’s a classical work you’d like to hear next week, go ahead and make your request here.
On today’s date in classical music history:
Jorge Bolet, c. 1975. (Photo by Lindsay Nelson – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of Cuban-American pianist Jorge Bolet in Havana in 1914. Bolet began piano lessons under his sister Maria when he was five; his first public appearance was a recital at age nine; and when he was ten, he debuted as soloist with the Havana Sinfonica. At 13, he received a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and studied piano with David Saperton and conducting with Fritz Reiner, with coaching from Josef Hofmann and Leopold Godowsky. Bolet was 16 when he debuted at Carnegie Hall with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra. The Cuban government paid for more of his training after he graduated from Curtis in 1934 and he went to Europe and began his concert career, performing in Amsterdam, Vienna, Berlin, Paris, London, the Hague, Milan, Madrid, and other cities. He returned to the U.S. in 1937, performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy, trained more with Rudolf Serkin, and won the Naumburg Award, then the Josef Hofmann Award (1938). From 1939-1942, he was Serkin’s assistant at Curtis. Bolet joined the Cuban army when World War II began and was a lieutenant serving at the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C. The Cuban government collapsed during the war and Bolet joined the U.S. Army in 1942 and became a U.S. citizen; he was with the Army of Occupation in Tokyo when he made his Japan debut as a soloist with the Nippon Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted the Japanese premiere of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. After the war, Bolet began touring relentlessly throughout Europe and the U.S. and appeared on radio and, later, television broadcasts. He began recording with small labels in the early 1950s and was known for his interpretations of piano works by Franz Liszt and Frédéric Chopin. Bolet was professor of music at the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington from 1968 to 1977, and from 1977 as the Head of Piano Department at Curtis. His touring, recording, and broadcasting continued throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 80s (including the 1984 A&E Network series, Bolet Meets Rachmaninoff); he gave master classes all over the world; and he garnered his first major recording contract at the age of 63 (Decca/London, 1978). His health began to decline in 1988 and he died in October, 1990. Bolet remains an unparalleled virtuoso, but is sometimes named as one of the most underrated pianists in the history of classical music.
Thursday, 14 November 2024
A very Happy Friday Eve to you all!
This week’s Thursday Night Opera House features the 1971 recording of Aldo Ceccato conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the John Alldis Choir, and legendary soloists in Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata. Young courtesan Violetta Valéry (Beverly Sills) meets Alfredo Germont (Nicolai Gedda) at a party and they fall in love. But his father, Giorgio Germont (Rolando Panerai), disapproves of the match. Join Dr. Jay Pierson at 7pm ET to hear the drama and tragedy that follow.
On this date in the history of classical music:
Lithograph of Johann Nepomuk Hummel by M. Gauci, c. 1825. (Bibliothèque nationale de France – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of Austrian virtuoso pianist and composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel in 1778 in Pressburg, Kingdom of Hungary (now Bratislava, Slovakia). Hummel was a piano prodigy and his father was director of the Imperial School of Military Music in Vienna, which put the young Hummel among music circles of Vienna early in his life. When he was eight years old, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was so impressed by Hummel’s early talent that he offered to house and teach the young student, free of charge; Hummel’s first concert appearance was at one of Mozart’s concerts at the age of nine. Hummel toured Europe with his father as chaperone and had lessons with Muzio Clementi after he arrived in London. He was also asked to premiere a work by Joseph Haydn while he was there. Hummel’s performance tour lasted into 1793, when he returned to Vienna and studied with Haydn, Antonio Salieri, and Johann Georg Albrechtsberger; Hummel developed a friendship with another of Albrechtsberger’s students, a young Ludwig van Beethoven. In 1804, Hummel was appointed Konzertmeister by Nikolaus II, Prince Esterházy at Eisenstadt; at the time, Haydn was the Prince’s Kapellmeister, but his health was failing and Hummel gradually took over many of his duties and became Kapellmeister when Haydn died in 1809. In 1814, Hummel toured Russia and more of Europe and was once again Kapellmeister in Stuttgart (1816-1818) and in Weimar from 1819 until his death in 1837. Throughout the years, he performed (and was by all accounts an astounding pianist), composed, and taught; one of his students was Carl Czerny (who taught Franz Liszt) and Felix Mendelssohn was also a student for a brief time. Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, and other composers named Hummel as an influence on their own works. Hummel was also instrumental in establishing some of the earliest copyright law for musical compositions and intellectual property. He also helped establish one of the first pension plans for musicians and gave performances to raise funds for the endeavor. Unsurprisingly, most of his compositions were for piano: eight piano concertos; a double concerto for violin and piano; ten piano sonatas; eight piano trios; a piano quartet; a piano quintet; two piano septets; and a number of works for piano four hand. But Hummel also wrote a lot of other music, including more than 20 operas, some masses, and songs; a wind octet; sonatas for cello and for mandolin; concerti for trumpet, clarinet, bassoon, and a number of other instruments; a quartet for clarinet and strings; and quite a number of works for guitar, which he also played very well.
Wednesday, 13 November 2024
A very good day to you, Listeners!
We hope you’re having a great week with some great classical music. Listen here.
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This week in News & Reviews, Matthew Young reviews Robert Schumann’s Fantasie in C, Op. 17 as performed by Marco Mantovani, a recording found on the album Robert Schumann On The Shoulders of Giants under the ET’CETERA label. Read the review here.
On this date in the history of classical music:
Portrait of Jan Zach. (Artist unknown – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of Czech violinist, organist, and composer Jan Zach in 1699 either in Dehtáry (now Jenštejn) or in Čelákovice. Not much is known about his early childhood except that his family supported themselves as wheelwrights. There must have been some music in the household, however; when Zach was 25 (1724), he moved to Prague and worked as a violinist in two churches, and studied organ. By 1937, he was organist at the monastic church of the Merciful Brethren and the Minorite chapel of St. Ann. Zach was in Prague until approximately 1740 and then moved to Augsburg, and in 1745 he was appointed Kapellmeister of the Electoral orchestra (now the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Mainz) at the court of Johann Friedrich Karl von Ostein, Prince-Elector of Mainz. The actual events and reasons are unknown, but conflicts developed between Zach and the Prince-Elector over the next few years, and Zach was suspended from the position in 1750; he was dismissed altogether in 1756 and may have never had steady formal employment again. But he traveled around Germany, Austria, and Italy, and supported himself by teaching, performing, and writing and selling copies of his musical compositions. It’s possible that he was choirmaster at the Pairis Abbey in Alsace for a while, and he is known to have taught music at Munich’s Jesuit school for brief periods. Zach was still traveling in 1773 when he died in Ellwangen. Many of his compositions were either lost or sold, but what survives is a healthy mix of instrumental and sacred music: more than 30 masses and three requiems; dozens of sinfonias for strings (some including woodwinds); a number of concerti for various instruments; and works for harpsichord and organ, including the Harpsichord Concerto in C minor.
Tuesday, 12 November 2024
A very good day to you, Listeners!
Don’t forget to make your requests for All-Request Friday and the Saturday Evening Request Program! We are looking forward to hearing what you choose as your favorites and dedications, so put those requests in right here. The playlists will be up later in the week so that you can see when your selection will broadcast. (And if your choice doesn’t show up this week, we appreciate your patience; we accommodate as many requests as we can and there’s a lot of great music out there!)
Tomorrow during Classical Café (Wednesday, 13 November, between 11am-12pm ET), George Leef will give away a pair of tickets to see David Finckel and Wu Han, courtesy of Duke Arts.
Tune in to win! More information is here.
On this date in the history of classical music:
Lucia Popp singing Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs at Orchestra Hall, Chicago, with Sir Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, c. 1977. (Photographer unknown – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of Slovakian operatic soprano Lucia Popp, born in Záhorská Ves in 1939. Popp’s mother was a singer and the two would sing often at home. She first attended Bratislava University as a student in medicine, but she made a switch to the city’s Academy of Performing Arts to study drama instead. When Popp was cast in a role that required singing, her talent was obvious and she began vocal lessons as a mezzo-soprano. With training, her voice became higher and she was a soprano when she made her professional debut in Bratislava at age 23 as the Queen of the Night in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Herbert von Karajan asked her to join the Vienna State Opera in 1963; she sang with the company throughout her career and was named an Austrian Kammersängerin a (royal chamber singer, traditionally) in 1979. Popp debuted with the Royal Opera House in 1966 and with the Metropolitan Opera the next year; she performed in operas and gave recitals until the early 1990s, when brain cancer put an end to her career and her life. In 2007, BBC Music Magazine named her one of the 20 All-Time Best Sopranos.
Monday, 11 November 2024
Welcome to the new week, Listeners! We’re glad to have you.
Listen to us here and take a look at our daily playlists here.
This week’s Monday Night at the Symphony features the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (founded in 1895), with Jesus Lopez-Cobos conducting the Symphony in C by Paul Dukas and Paavo Jervi conducting Sergei Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2. Join us at 8pm ET for the symphony.
Tune into Classical Café with George Leef tomorrow (and every Tuesday) for his weekly Legendary Performer feature; this week it’s Sir Georg Solti. And on Wednesday, he’ll give away a pair of tickets (between 11am-12pm ET) to see David Finckel and Wu Han, courtesy of Duke Arts.
On this date in classical music history:
Ernest Ansermet (left) with Benjamin Britten, c.1946. (Photographer unknown – ©National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG x15206)
It’s the birthdate of Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet in Vevey in 1883. Ansermet’s mother was a pianist who gave him his first lessons, and his father was a geometer and singer. Ansermet himself studied mathematics and physics at the University of Lausanne, then signed on as a faculty member when he graduated at the age of 20. He moved to Paris intending to do graduate work at the Sorbonne, but instead he got caught up in musical circles and then moved back to Switzerland to teach again for a few years. In 1909, he finally gave in to his desire to pursue music; he moved to Germany to study under Richard Strauss, Arthur Nikisch, and Felix Mottl by studying their orchestra rehearsals and conducting techniques. He returned to Switzerland and continued his studies by attending Cari Ehrenberg’s rehearsals with the Orchèstre Symphonique de Lausanne, debuting as a conductor with the same orchestra in 1911. Ansermet took over as conductor at the Casino in Montreux the next year and met Igor Stravinsky backstage after one of the performances; the two became lifelong friends and Ansermet premiered and recorded much of Stravinsky’s music as well as that of other Russian composers. From 1915 to 1923, he was conductor for the Ballets Russes in France and toured with the group throughout Europe, the U.S., and South America; he made his first recordings with the group and also met and befriended Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel and conducted performances of their music. During this period (1918), Ansermet founded his own orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (OSR), which also toured all over Europe and the U.S. and performed the often difficult works of mostly Russian and French contemporary composers. He conducted the Argentine National Orchestra during the summers until 1928; Ansermet decided he wanted to help provide an income for other musicians during the summer month and he founded the Lucerne Festival in 1938. During World War II, the festival also provided a haven for the artists who were unwelcome at Nazi Germany’s Salzburg and Bayreuth Festivals. The OSR toured throughout the years of World War II and then entered into an exclusive contract with Decca Records; in 1954, Ansermet and the OSR made Europe’s first commercial stereophonic recordings, including the first stereo performance of the complete The Nutcracker by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky on LP. In 1962, Ansermet made the first complete recording of Joseph Haydn’s Paris symphonies. He also composed solo piano pieces and some compositions for orchestra, including a symphonic poem, Feuilles de Printemps (Leaves of Spring). He also orchestrated Debussy’s Six épigraphes antiques. He retired in 1968 after making more than 300 recordings for Decca (and hundreds of other recordings for other labels) and conducting an untold number of performances, and died the next year at the age of 85.