This Week at The Classical Station
by Chrissy Keuper
Saturday and Sunday, 31 May – 1 June 2025
It’s the weekend (YES) and The Classical Station has great classical music to accompany all of your plans!
This weekend:
Saturday at 1pm, Saturday On Point features Pineapple Poll by Arthur Sullivan, a seafaring-flavored and romantic ballet inspired by the witty satire of the Gilbert and Sullivan oeuvre.
Then, join us at 6pm ET for the Saturday Evening Request Program.
(Here’s the playlist; make requests for next week’s programs here.
On Sunday, Great Sacred Music features the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge; the Voices of Ascension Chorus; and Voces8, with works by Dan Locklair; Henry Purcell; Nathaniel Dett, and others. Get your sacred Sunday morning started at 8am ET, following Sing For Joy.
And Preview! features the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 33; Alisa Weilerstein and Inon Barnatan with the Cello Sonata No. 2 in F by Johannes Brahms; pianist Bruce Liu with Maurice Ravel’s Miroirs, and a lot more. Join Tom Hayakawa at 6pm ET for the best in new classical releases.
On these days in the history of classical music:
Marin Marais in a portrait by André Bouys, c. 1704. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).jpg
French composer and viol virtuoso Marin Marais was born May 31, 1656, in Paris. Marais was a composition student of Jean-Baptiste Lully and was hired into the royal court of Versailles as a musician in 1676; he remained in the royal court and directed the orchestra of France’s Royal Academy of Music until 1725. As a master of the viol, Marais became the premier composer of music for the instrument with his Pièces de viole. He also wrote chamber music for other instruments, as well as four operas. In addition, Marais is thought to be one of the earliest composers of program credited with being one of the earliest composers of program music (works that depict a narrative beyond the music itself).
Edo de Waart, date unknown. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
And a very Happy Birthday to retired Dutch conductor Edo de Waart, born June 1, 1941, in Amsterdam. De Waart studied oboe, piano, and conducting at the Sweelinck Conservatory; was associate principal oboe in the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (RCO); and won the 1964 Dimitris Mitropoulos Conducting Competition. Afterward, he trained as assistant conductor to Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic and with Bernard Haitink and the RCO. De Waart has since conducted and made recordings with many orchestras in Europe and the U.S., including the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra; the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra; the Royal Flemish Philharmonic; the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, and others, before retiring in 2024.
Thursday, 29 May 2025
A very Happy Friday Eve to you all!
Come celebrate with us this evening during Thursday Night Opera House, featuring Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Così fan tutte, a comic opera about love, fidelity, deception, and the pitfalls of relationships. Join Dr. Jay Pierson at 7pm ET for this 1967 recording of Erich Leinsdorf conducting the New Philharmonia Orchestra, the Ambrosia Opera Chorus, and legendary soloists.
On this day in classical music history:
Erich Wolfgang Korngold at work in his studio, c. 1935. (Photographer unknown – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of Austrian-American composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, born in Brünn, Austria-Hungary (now Brno in the Czech Republic) in 1897. Korngold was a musical prodigy and an early composer. When he was 11, he wrote Der Schneemann (The Snowman), a ballet that was a hit in Vienna when it premiered in 1910; in his teenage years, he had two successful operas produced in Germany. In the 1930s, Korngold started his long career of writing music for Hollywood films and began traveling back and forth between Europe and the U.S. He is considered a groundbreaking composer in the film industry and won several Academy Awards for his music (including his score for The Adventures of Robin Hood, 1938). But Korngold never forgot his roots in classical music and he composed nonprogrammatic orchestral and chamber works; his Violin Concerto (1937) is among the most frequently performed works of the 20th century.
Wednesday, 28 May 2025
Hello, All!
We are enjoying the wonderful music with you.
On this date in classical music history:
Seong-Jin Cho. (Photo by Christoph Köstlin, Deutsche Grammophon)
A very Happy Birthday to South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, born in Seoul in 1994. Cho studied both piano and violin in early childhood, and then focused on piano in his studies at the Seoul Arts Center, Sunchon National University, Seoul National University, and the Conservatoire de Paris. He won the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition (the first winner from South Korea) and he travels the globe, performing and recording as a virtuoso with the world’s foremost orchestras. Currently, Cho performs more than 100 times a year and will be the subject of the London Symphony Orchestra’s Artist Portrait for the 2025-26 season.
Tuesday, 27 May 2025
We thank you all so very, very much for your support of The Classical Station since 1978.
Please consider a gift of support to help ensure the future of classical music on the airwaves and online.
On this date in the history of classical music:
Thea Musgrave, c. 2015. (© Bryan Sheffield)
A very Happy Birthday to Scottish composer Thea Musgrave, born in Edinburgh in 1928. Musgrave attended the University of Edinburgh and was a student of Nadia Boulanger in Paris from 1950 to 1954, then Aaron Copland at the 1958 Tanglewood Festival. She also taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and was a distinguished professor at Queens College, City University of New York for many years. Musgrave has written orchestral and chamber works, choral compositions, and operas (including Mary Queen of Scots, 1977), and is a winner of the Koussevitzky Award (1974), two Guggenheim Fellowships (1974-75; 1982-83), and the Queen’s Medal for Music (2017).