This Week at The Classical Station
by Chrissy Keuper
Saturday, 23 November and Sunday, 24 November 2024
Hello, Weekend!
Tune into The Classical Station for a great soundtrack to whatever you have planned.
Saturday:
Join Haydn Jones at 6pm ET for the Saturday Evening Request Program. The playlist can be found here, and you can make requests for next week’s programs here.
Sunday:
This week’s Great Sacred Music is a Thanksgiving celebration including performances by the Boston Pops Orchestra with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus; The Choir and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House; and organist E. Power Biggs.You’ll hear works by Bob Chilcott, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Henry Purcell.This week’s featured work is The Pilgrim’s Progress by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Join Mick Anderson at 8am ET, right after Sing for Joy.
On these dates in the history of classical music:
Ludovico Einaudi performing in Tehran, c. 2012. (Photo by Meghdad Madadi – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
A very Happy Birthday to Italian pianist and composer Ludovico Einaudi, born in Turin on November 23, 1955. Einaudi began playing the piano as a child and the guitar as a teenager, when he also began composing. He started his formal music education at Milan’s Conservatorio Verdi (he graduated in 1982); he studied orchestration with Luciano Berio; and then he won a scholarship to the Tanglewood Music Festival. He was composing traditional classical pieces to start with, but then began incorporating other genres into his creations, with an especially heavy influence of folk and world music. He has written music specifically for dance theatre, film, and television, as well as for solo piano and other instruments, and his compositions have been featured in various media projects; his solo piano work I Giorni (2001) was used to promote BBC arts and culture programming and subsequently made the UK Singles Chart in 2011.
Edgar Meyer. (Photo by Jim McGuire – Courtesy of edgarmeyer.com)
And a very Happy Birthday to American bassist and composer Edgar Meyer, born November 24, 1960, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Meyer had his first double bass lessons with his father, who oversaw a string orchestra program in local schools, then studied the instrument at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has won seven Grammy Awards (and been nominated ten times) for music in a number of genres, including classical; his works have been commissioned by the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, the Aspen Music Festival and School, and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields; and his compositions have been premiered and recorded by legendary performers like Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Hilary Hahn, the Emerson String Quartet, and others. Meyer is currently Artist in Residence at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music and on the faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music.
Friday, 22 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). If there’s a classical work you’d like to hear next week, go ahead and make your request here.)
HEADS-UP: TICKET GIVEAWAY
Join George Leef during Classical Café next Wednesday (November 27, between 11am-12pm ET) for a chance to win tickets to see the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle‘s production of Amahl and the Night Visitors.
Tune in and kick off the holidays with a win!
On today’s date in classical music history:
Kent Nagano, c. 2017. (Photo by Antoine Saito – Courtesy of kentnagano.com)
A very Happy Birthday to Japanese-American conductor Kent Nagano, born in Berkeley, California, in 1951. Nagano was first a student of sociology and music at University of California, Santa Cruz, then of music composition at San Francisco State University and at the École Normale de Musique de Paris. He made his conducting debut with the Opera Company of Boston, then became music director and conductor of the Berkeley Symphony in 1978 (until 2009). During this tenure, Nagano also conducted the London Symphony Orchestra (1982) and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (1984); was Music Director of the Ojai Music Festival four times (ending 2004) and of the Opéra National de Lyon (1988-1998); served as principal conductor of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester (1992-1999); principal conductor and artistic director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (2000-2006); principal conductor (2001–2002) and then first music director (2003-2006) of the Los Angeles Opera (LA Opera); and a regular guest conductor at the Salzburg Festival. In 2006, Nagano was named music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and Generalmusikdirektor of the Bavarian State Opera until 2013. Nagano has been Generalmusikdirektor of the Hamburg State Opera since 2015 and ends his tenure there in 2025. He is also the president of the European Opera Centre in Liverpool.
Thursday, 21 November 2024
Happy Friday Eve, All!
This week’s Thursday Night Opera House** features the 1975 recording of Richard Bonynge conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, the Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and amazing soloists in Vincenzo Bellini’s I Puritani, set in 1650 in Puritan stronghold Plymouth, England. As the Royalists and the partisan Puritans battle for power, Elvira (Joan Sutherland), the daughter of the fortress’s commander, is promised to Sir Riccardo Forth (Piero Cappuccilli) in marriage, but she’s actually in love with a Royalist, Lord Arturo Talbo (Luciano Pavarotti). Join us at 7pm ET to hear what happens.
(**This is a 2005 archival broadcast with former host Al Ruocchio.)
On this date in the history of classical music:
İdil Biret performing at Küçükçekmece, Turkey, c. 2012. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
A very Happy Birthday to Turkish pianist İdil Biret, born in Ankara in 1941. Biret was considered a prodigy; she began learning the preludes of Johann Sebastian Bach at the age of four. She had lessons with Mithat Fenmen, who had been a student of Alfred Cortot and Nadia Boulanger at the Conservatoire de Paris. Biret was seven years old when she was herself admitted to the Conservatoire as a student of Boulanger and Jean Doyen. She graduated at 15 with prizes and debuted as a soloist with the Leningrad Philharmonic when she was 16 (on her first concert tour, in the Soviet Union). Biret’s U.S. debut was in 1963 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and she has gone on to perform with the world’s premiere orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de France, and many more. Biret has made more than 100 recordings, among which are the world-premiere of Franz Liszt’s transcriptions of Ludwig van Beethoven’s nine symphonies; the piano transcription of Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird; and a prize-winning collection of works by Frédéric Chopin.
Wednesday, 20 November 2024
Hello, Listeners!
Please consider WCPE / The Classical Station in your End-of-Year Giving.
We are listener-supported public radio, broadcasting since 1978, and your support helps us make Great Classical Music available to the world, on the airwaves and online. We thank you!
By the way:
Some businesses will match employee contributions to nonprofits like The Classical Station (and some will even double or triple the amount of a gift of support). Ask your employer (or previous employer, if you’re retired) if they will match your gift, or search those businesses here. If you’re a business owner who would like to match and/or boost your employees’ contributions to The Classical Station, email our membership department.
And consider becoming one of our Business Sponsors! You’ll reach a global audience of loyal listeners AND you’ll be supporting WCPE/The Classical Station, too. Email WCPE’s business development specialist Mary Moonen to learn more.
On this date in the history of classical music:
Kenneth Schermerhorn conducting the Nashville Symphony, c. 2004. (Photo by Wharton Photography, Nashville Symphony)
It’s the birthdate of American conductor Kenneth Schermerhorn in Schenectady, New York, in 1929. Schermerhorn was an early student of clarinet, violin, and trumpet, and was admitted to the New England Conservatory of Music. In 1950, he played trumpet with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Kansas City Philharmonic, and several other orchestras; he was drafted into the U.S. Army (1953) and was conductor of the U.S. Seventh Army’s Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra while serving in Germany. As a result, Schermerhorn won the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Medal and the Harriet Cohen International Music Award for young conductors. When he returned to the U.S., he studied under Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts, winning the Serge Koussevitzky Memorial Conducting Award for two consecutive years. He became music director of the American Ballet Theatre in 1957 (until 1968, then again 1982-1984) and conducted the 1977 television production of The Nutcracker (starring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gelsey Kirkland); he also served as music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra (1963-1965). In 1968, he became the music director and conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and is still named as one of the orchestra’s most influential and beloved directors. Schermerhorn was named music director and conductor of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra in 1983 and he remained with the orchestra until his death in 2005; during that tenure, he also served as music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (1984-1988) and led the orchestra’s first tour of the People’s Republic of China in 1986. Schermerhorn is praised for raising the profile of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville is named after him; his ashes are also interred in the sculpture of “The Flutist” on the Center property.
Tuesday, 19 November 2024
A good day to you all, Listeners!
Don’t forget to make your requests for this week’s All-Request Friday and the Saturday Evening Request Program! Our announcers always look forward to making that connection with you by seeing where you are, hearing what you’ve chosen, and reading your dedications. It’s a huge highlight of our week!
Heads-Up: Ticket Giveaway Tomorrow
Tomorrow during Classical Café (Wednesday, 20 November, between 11am-12pm ET), George Leef will give away a pair of tickets to see North Carolina Opera’s production of The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson. Tune in and win some tickets to see renowned mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves in the role of the North Carolina-native who founded the National Negro Opera Company.
On this date in the history of classical music:
Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, c. 1911. (Postcard photo – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of Russian composer and conductor Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov in 1859 in Gatchina, near St. Petersburg. His early musical instruction was at home and at St. Isaac’s Cathedral, where he was a choirboy. He was admitted into the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1875 as a student of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. After graduating, Ippolitov-Ivanov was appointed director of the music academy and conductor of the orchestra in Tiflis, in the Republic of Georgia; he began to develop a taste for the traditional music of the region’s non-Slav minorities, which inspired his composition Yar-khmel (Spring Overture), Op. 1 (1882) and later his Kavkazskiye Eskizi (Caucasian Sketches), Op. 10 & Op. 46 (1894, 1896). In 1893, he was appointed professor at the Moscow Conservatory, then was director from 1905 until 1924; he was also conducting for the Russian Choral Society, the Mamontov and the Zimin Operas, and then the Bolshoi Theatre, and also served as president of the Society of Writers and Composers. Ippolitov-Ivanov’s music is very rarely heard, with the exception of the extremely well-known Caucasian Sketches, and he wrote other orchestral music and symphonies; operas; chamber music; many songs and sacred vocal music, including a Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Op. 37 and Vespers, Op. 43.
Monday, 18 November 2024
Hello, Listeners! Welcome to a brand new week at The Classical Station.
L’Orchestre National de France with conductor Daniele Gatti, c. 2009. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
This week’s Monday Night at the Symphony features the French National Orchestra (founded in 1934) and includes music by Robert Schumann, George Enescu, and Claude Debussy, conducted by Danielle Gatti, Leonard Bernstein, and current Music Director Cristian Macelaru. Join us for the symphony at 8pm ET.
Belgian violinist Arthur Grumiaux (1921 – 1986), 23rd November 1961. (Photo by Erich Auerbach/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Tune into Classical Café with George Leef tomorrow (and every Tuesday) for his weekly Legendary Performer feature; this week it’s Belgian violin virtuoso Arthur Grumiaux.
And on Wednesday (November 20, between 11am-12pm ET), he’ll give away a pair of tickets to see North Carolina Opera’s production of The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson.
On this date in classical music history:
Lillian Fuchs. (Date/photographer unknown – Courtesy of Jewish Music WebCenter)
It’s the birthdate of American violist and composer Lillian Fuchs in New York City in 1903. Fuchs grew up with violin lessons from her father (as did her brothers, violinist Joseph Fuchs and cellist Harry Fuchs) and then she studied violin and music composition at what is now the Juilliard School (then the Institute of Musical Art). Fuchs was a founding member of the Perolé Quartet in 1925 (until 1945) and she publicly débuted on the violin in New York in 1926, but her teacher, violinist Franz Kneisel, convinced her to change to viola. She toured and performed throughout her life, collaborating with the Budapest and Amadeus String Quartets; with her brothers (composer Bohuslav Martinů composed and dedicated his Madrigals for violin and viola to her and her brother Joseph); she formed the Lillian Fuchs Trio with her twin daughters; performed with the Musicians Guild; and was a soloist with many major orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic and the Casals Festival Orchestra. In the 1950s, she began her teaching career at the Manhattan School of Music, the Juilliard School, and the Aspen Music Festival and School, and she and her brother Joseph founded the Blue Hill Music School; Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, and Dorothy DeLay were among her many students. Fuchs made many recordings and was the first to record Johan Sebastian Bach’s Suites for Cello on the viola (1950s). She also wrote instructional compositions for the viola (which are standard in universities and music schools worldwide) and a Sonata Pastorale for solo viola, and she was considered one of the finest violists of her time and perhaps in the history of the modern instrument.
The Classical Station is offering a free, 6-week Volunteer Announcer Training program, covering broadcast technique, equipment operation and federal regulations. Volunteers who successfully complete the training will be eligible to host our live classical music broadcasts.