This Week at The Classical Station

by Chrissy Keuper

Saturday and Sunday, 18-19 January 2025

Here’s what’s coming up this weekend:

Saturday:

Join Haydn Jones at 6pm ET for the Saturday Evening Request Program. The playlists are here and you can make requests for next week here.

Sunday:

This week’s Great Sacred Music includes performances by the Choir of St. Thomas Church, Leipzig; the Academy of Ancient Music; and the Northwest German Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra, with works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Maurice Ravel, Thomas Tallis, and more. Our featured work is Petite Messe Solennelle by Giachino Rossini. Join us at 8am ET, right after Sing for Joy.

And at 6pm ET, Tom Hayakawa will give you a taste of some of the latest releases from the classical music world on Preview!.

On these dates in the history of classical music:

Constance Weldon, date unknown. (International Tuba Euphonium Association Journal, Linda Broadwell – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

American tubist Constance Weldon was born on January 25, 1932, in Winter Haven, Florida, and spent most of her childhood in Miami. Weldon began learning various instruments at school, but she fell in love with the tuba when her father brought one home from a pawn shop and decided she would specialize in tuba performance at the University of Miami. Weldon successfully auditioned for the Tanglewood Music Festival in 1951 and was offered a position with the Rio de Janeiro Symphony Orchestra. She decided to finish her degree instead (1953); performed again at the Tanglewood Music Festival in 1954; and then became the first woman tubist with a major American orchestra when Arthur Fiedler asked her to join the Boston Pops Orchestra in 1955. Weldon performed with the North Carolina Symphony from 1956 to 1957, studied in Amsterdam on a Fulbright Scholarship, and was Acting Principal for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and performed with the Netherlands Ballet Orchestra while she was there. She returned to the U.S., performed with the Kansas City Philharmonic, and then joined the faculty as professor of tuba at the University of Miami, where she founded and directed the University of Miami Tuba Ensemble and taught until her 1991 retirement.

15th October 1964: English cellist Jacqueline Du Pre (1945 – 1987) in rehearsal with pianist Stephen Bishop Kovacevich. (Photo by Erich Auerbach/Getty Images)

British cellist Jacqueline du Pré was born in Oxford on January 26, 1945, and became one of the most prominent cellists of the 20th century. Du Pré was 11 when she won the Guilhermina Suggia Award and 16 when she made her performance debut at Wigmore Hall. She studied at Guildhall School of Music and won the school’s Gold Medal in 1960, and then continued her studies with cellists Paul Tortelier, Pablo Casals, and Mstislav Rostropovich. Du Pré earned international fame with her American debut in 1965, followed by a career performing and recording with the world’s leading orchestras (and a marriage with pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim). She made her last recording and began withdrawing from public performance in 1971 after she began experiencing symptoms of multiple sclerosis; she was diagnosed in 1973, the last year she performed publicly. She remained an active teacher until her death in 1987, and she is the subject of the tragic opera Jacqueline (music by Luna Pearl Woolf, libretto by Royce Vavrek).

Friday, 24 January 2025

Happy Friday, Listeners!

It’s All-Request Friday (10am-10pm ET) and then we’ll play your favorites and dedications again tomorrow on the Saturday Evening Request Program (6pm-12am ET). Check the playlists to see what will play when, and make your requests and dedications for next week.

Heads-Up: Ticket Giveaway

Wednesday (January 29th between 11am-12pm ET) on Classical Café, George Leef will give away a pair of tickets to Burning Coal Theatre Company’s production of Paint Me This House of Love by Chelsea Woolley. Tune in for great music and your chance to win!

On today’s date in the history of classical music:

Stephen Gould as Siegfried during a dress rehearsal at Vienna State Opera. (AP Photo, Stephan Trierenberg)

It’s the birthdate of American tenor Stephen Grady Gould, born in Roanoke, Virginia, in 1962. Gould attended Olivet Nazarene University and New England Conservatory of Music as a baritone; he joined the Lyric Opera of Chicago and then sang a role for the Los Angeles Opera in 1989 before joining the first U.S. tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera (for more than 3000 performances). Gould thought his career might be over when he came off of the tour, but he was encouraged to revive his voice studies, and his teacher John Fiorito helped him train for tenor (heldentenor) roles; he took a break from performance while he trained and appeared in his first heldentenor role at the Landestheater Linz in 2000. He was then invited to perform with the Bavarian State Opera (2001); at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (2002); at the Bayreuth Festival and the Vienna State Opera (2004), with which he appeared in more than 100 performances. He went on to tour and give concerts and he sang roles at the Royal Opera House, London; in Las Palmas and Rome; in Tokyo; and with the Metropolitan Opera, the Palermo Opera, and the Graz Opera. Gould performed up until August, 2023, when he retired suddenly due to health reasons and died shortly after. He is memorialized in many recordings and was nominated for a 2014 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording (Deutsche Grammophon’s recording of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen).

Thursday, 23 January 2025

Happy Friday Eve, Listeners!

Tomorrow is All-Request Friday, so check out the playlist to see when your (and your fellow listeners’) favorites and dedications are scheduled to broadcast. We are looking forward to it, as always!

This evening’s Thursday Night Opera House features the 1985 recording of Richard Bonynge conducting the Welsh National Opera Orchestra and astounding soloists in George Frideric Handel’s Rodelinda. The opera begins as Grimoaldo has usurped the throne of Milan from Bertarido, the King of Lombardy; Bertarido has fled and his queen Rodelinda and son Flavio are Grimoaldo’s prisoners. Will Bertarido be able to rescue his wife and son from the usurper??
Join Dr. Jay Pierson at 7pm ET to find out.

On this day in classical music history:

Robert and Gaby Casadesus, date unknown. (Photo by Axel Casadesus – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

It’s the birthdate of French pianist and composer Robert Casadesus in Paris in 1878. Casadesus was born into a musically-distinguished family that included his uncles, violist and composer Henri Casadesus and violinist and composer Marius Casadesus. Young Robert studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, taking Premier Prix in piano in 1913 and the Prix Diémer in 1920. Casadesus married pianist Gaby L’Hôte Casadesus in 1921 and they often performed together as the Robert and Gaby Casadesus Duo. He began collaborating with Maurice Ravel in 1922; the two created piano rolls of Ravel’s works and performed together in France, Spain, and England. In 1935, he took a teaching position at the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau; he and his family relocated to Princeton, New Jersey, during World War II (Albert Einstein was one of Casadesus’s neighbors there and the two played together occasionally, as Einstein was a violinist) and established a Fontainebleau School in the U.S. before moving it back to Fontainebleau after the war (1946). Casadesus continued to record and compose until his death in 1972 and wrote orchestral works, concerti, chamber music, and works for voice and for solo and duo piano. His Symphony No. 7, “Israel,” was dedicated to his collaborator and friend George Szell.

Wednesday, 15 January 2025

Hello, Listeners! Thank you for spending the week with The Classical Station.

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On this date in the history of classical music:

It’s the birthdate of Swiss flutist Aurèle Nicolet in 1926 in Neuchâtel. He attended the Conservatoire de Paris in flute and music theory, graduating in 1947 with a Premier Prix du Conservatoire and winning first prize at Geneva’s international flute competition the next year. Nicolet began his professional career as a soloist with the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zürich (1947-48) and Winterthurer Stadtorchester (1948-50), then as principal flutist with the Berlin Philharmonic (1950-1959). During his tenure in Berlin, Nicolet was named professor of flute at the Musikhochschule in Berlin (1952-1965), then professor and head of masterclasses at the Musikhochschule in Freiburg im Breisgau until 1981. Nicolet performed as a soloist with the world’s premier orchestras, held masterclasses worldwide, and started the Aurèle Nicolet Competition for flute in Beijing, China, all while collaborating with flute-makers and other musicians and making numerous recordings. He was considered to be among the best flutists of the 20th century, and perhaps all time.

Tuesday, 21 January 2024

A very good day to you all!

Get your requests and dedications in for

All-Request Friday and the Saturday Evening Request Program!

(Do it before the week gets away from you.)

On this date in the history of classical music:

Manuel García in a portrait by Malcolm Sterling Mackinlay, c. 1908. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

It’s the birthdate of Spanish tenor, composer, impresario, singing teacher, and head of a musical dynasty Manuel García (Manuel the Senior, born Manuel del Pópulo Vicente Rodriguez García) in 1775 in Seville. García had already performed in Madrid and Cadiz and had composed a few light operas before living in Paris, Naples, and London. In Naples, he sang in the premieres of several of Gioachino Rossini’s operas, including The Barber of Seville. García’s own operas were premiered by the Paris Opera, the Opéra-Comique and the Gymnase-Dramatique. He also began his own small opera company (half of which was populated by family members); they performed the first Italian operas in New York in 1825 and also performed in Mexico, but returned to Paris in 1829 and lived the last two years of his life there. During his lifetime, García became the quintessential example of an Italian tenor (though he had a wide range and often sang baritone, as well) and was very famous worldwide and was widely respected as both a singer and as a teacher. His influence on the world of opera (while he was alive and even after his death) cannot be overemphasized, especially in the U.S., nor can his genealogy, which included singer, composer, and teacher Manuel García, Junior (whose son was baritone and teacher Gustave Garcia); singer Maria García Malibran (whose son was pianist, composer, and teacher Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot); and singer and composer Pauline García Viardot (whose children included pianist, composer and singer Louise Louise Héritte-Viardot and violinist and composer Paul Viardot). García’s operas are also still being premiered (including the world premiere of L’isola disabitata (1830) at Wake Forest University in 2005) and many of the more than 90 operas that he wrote during his career are still being performed.

Monday, 20 January 2025

Hello, All! Thank you for tuning in for Great Classical Music.

This week’s Monday Night at the Symphony features the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra celebrating the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Edvard Grieg, Fritz Kreisler, and Felix Mendelssohn. Join us at 8pm ET.

Tomorrow (Tuesday), tune into Classical Café with George Leef for his weekly Legendary Performer feature; this week, it’s conductor and cellist Sir John Barbirolli. And on Wednesday (January 22nd between 11am-12pm ET) he’ll give away a pair of tickets to North Carolina Symphony’s performance of Scheherazade by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, as well as works by Caroline Shaw and Henri Dutilleux. Tune in to win!

On this date in classical music history:

Ernest Chausson, c. 1897. (Photo by Guy & Mockel, Paris – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

It’s the birthdate of French composer Ernest Chausson in 1855 in Paris. Chausson first studied law (at the request of his father) and was a barrister for the Court of Appeals, but his interests really lay in music; he was a frequent visitor to the many Paris salons of the day and made friends with many artists and musicians, as a result. Chausson had already composed some songs and piano works when he entered composition studies under Jules Massenet at the Conservatoire de Paris at the age of 24 (1879); Massenet found him to be exceptional. He continued to compose and served as secretary of the Société Nationale de Musique in 1886 (until his 1899 death in a bicycle accident). Chausson’s music was highly influenced by his teacher Massenet; by his friends and colleagues moving in Parisian music circles at the time; and Russian literary figures like Ivan Turgenev and Fyodr Dostoyevsky. He left behind just under 40 opus-numbered works (including his opera Le roi Arthus (King Arthur); his symphonic poem Viviane; his only symphony, Symphony in B-flat; Poème for violin and orchestra; and the song-cycle Poème de l’amour et de la mer) and is thought to be the first composer to include the celesta.