This Week at The Classical Station
by Chrissy Keuper
Saturday and Sunday, 14-15 June 2025
Weekend! YES. Got some plans? Great.
We’re right here with your soundtrack.
This weekend:
Saturday On Point presents the complete ballet music from the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, performed by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under José Serebrier. A rare, sublime musical journey from Aida to Othello to the dazzling highlight of The Four Seasons from The Sicilian Vespers. Experience Verdi’s genius as dance and drama collide in spectacular fashion. Join Peggy Powell at 1pm ET.
At 6pm ET, more of your requests and special dedications on the Saturday Evening Request Program. (Here’s the playlist; make requests for next week’s programs here.)
Get your sacred Sunday morning started at 8am ET with Great Sacred Music and performances by the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge; Schola Cantorum of Oxford; and the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, with works by John Rutter; Aaron Copland; Florence Price, and more.
And at 6pm ET, Tom Hayakawa brings you the best in new and recent classical releases on Preview!, including recordings of the Rautio Trio with one of Ludwig van Beethoven’s piano trios and Cristian Măcelaru conducting the National Orchestra of France with two rhapsodies by George Enescu.
On these dates in the history of classical music:
Lang Lang after a performance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, c. 2010. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
A very Happy Birthday to Chinese pianist Lang Lang, born in Shenyang on June 14, 1982. Lang has performed with major orchestras around the world since the 1990s and was the first Chinese pianist to perform with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, and several orchestras in the U.S. Lang says he was inspired to learn piano at the age of two when he saw an episode of the cartoon Tom and Jerry (The Cat Concerto) that featured Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. By the time Lang was six years old, he had won first place at the Shenyang Piano Competition and performed his first public recital. He won the Xinghai National Piano Competition in Beijing in 1993; first prize for outstanding artistic performance at the International Competition for Young Pianists in Ettlingen, Germany, in 1994; won the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians in Japan and performed as soloist with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra in 1995; and was featured soloist for the China National Symphony’s inaugural concert in 1996. Lang and his family moved to the U.S. in 1997 so that he could attend the Curtis Institute of Music. He was among Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2009, and he has performed for literally billions of people in person, on television, and online.
Stjepan Hauser performing with 2CELLOS in Nuremberg, c. 2017. (Photo by Stefan Brending, 2eight – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
A very Happy Birthday to Croatian cellist Stjepan Hauser, born June 15, 1986, in Pula. Hauser was a music student in Zagreb and then the U.K. at Trinity College of Music and as a Dorthy Stone Scholar at Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester. He launched his YouTube channel in 2009; formed 2CELLOS with fellow cellist Luka Šulić, performs and records as a soloist with orchestras all over the world, and collaborates with other musicians (including violinist Lana Trotovsek and pianist Yoko Misumi as the Greenwich Trio).
Friday, 13 June 2025
Happy Friday, Listeners!
Join us for 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).
What’s on the list?
I want to make requests and dedications for next week!
HEADS-UP: Ticket Giveaway
Next Wednesday on Classical Café (June 18th between 11am-12pm ET), George Leef will give away tickets to another performance in the Ciompi Quartet’s Summertime Chamber Music Series: Haydn, Brahms & Gubaidulina, featuring violist Jonathan Bagg with Laura Gilbert, flute; Rane Moore, clarinet; Rieko Aizawa, piano; Jesse Mills, violin; and Anna Elishvili, violin. Tune in to win some tickets!
On this date in classical music history:
Kristjan Järvi conducting the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, c. 2012. (Photo by MDR, Christiane Hoehne)
A very Happy Birthday to Estonian-American conductor and composer Kristjan Järvi, born in 1972 in Tallinn. Järvi was seven years old when the family left Estonia and settled in New Jersey, and he studied piano at the Manhattan School of Music and conducting at the University of Michigan. Järvi co-founded and directed the Absolute Ensemble (1993) and his conducting career began in 1998 with a post as Assistant Conductor to Esa-Pekka Salonen at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. From there, he has gone on to serve as conductor and music director to a number of orchestras, including the Tonkünstler Orchestra, Vienna; Kammerorchester Basel; and the MDR Symphony Orchestra. In addition to classic repertoire, Järvi is a specialist of 20th-century composers and contemporary music; he runs his own music experience production company, Sunbeam Productions; and he’s a composer.
Wednesday, 11 June 2025
Hello, Listeners!
We hope you’re having an excellent week and are enjoying some great classical music.
On this date in classical music history:
Richard Strauss, c. 1922. (Photo by Ferdinand Schmutzer – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of German composer Richard Strauss in Munich in 1864. Strauss’s father Franz was regarded as one of the preeminent French hornists of his time and was a musician with the Munich Court Opera (now the Bavarian State Opera). The young Strauss was composing as a young child and had more than 140 works under his belt by the time he turned 18. He made his living as a conductor as he gained more and more attention for his compositions and was considered to be a musical descendant of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner. Strauss’s tone poems were among his first compositions to draw international interest, including Don Juan (1888); Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1896); and Don Quixote (1897), and he was soon well-known for his vocal works and operas and for An Alpine Symphony (1915), which was regarded as a peak in orchestral instrumentation. Strauss was a core composer of the Romantic era, but he wasn’t afraid of modernity, and his musical evolution profoundly influenced composers like Béla Bartók, Arnold Schönberg, and Anton Webern.
Tuesday, 10 June 2025
Thank you for supporting The Classical Station since 1978.
We are honored to broadcast great classical music 24-hours a day for your listening pleasure,
and we would be exponentially honored if you would consider a gift of support to keep classical music on the airwaves and online.
On this date in the history of classical music:
Joseph Daussoigne-Méhul in a lithograph by François de Meersman, c. 1850-1900. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of French composer Joseph Daussoigne-Méhul in 1790 in Givet, Ardennes. Daussoigne-Méhul was only nine years old when he entered music studies at the Conservatoire de Paris; over the next ten years, he won prizes in music theory, composition, piano, and counterpoint and fugue competitions, and he began teaching at the Conservatoire, as well. He won the Prix de Rome in 1809 with his cantata, Agar dans le désert; studied for a few years at the French Academy in Rome; and then returned to teaching at the Conservatoire. In 1826, Daussoigne-Méhul was appointed as the first director of the Royal Conservatory of Liège by William I of the Netherlands and he served in the post for the next 35 years. Although virtually none of his music is included in performance repertoire, Daussoigne-Méhul was admired among his contemporaries and he wrote works for solo piano, a few operas, and some chamber and orchestral works.
Monday, 9 June 2025
It’s a new week filled with wonderful possibilities, Listeners.
We’re privileged to be your soundtrack.
This evening at 7pm ET, join Vince Tillona for Drop the Needle and the warmth of vinyl recordings. This week’s show showcases string legends Pablo Casals and Jascha Heifetz.
And at 8pm ET, Monday Night at the Symphony features the Vienna Philharmonic and works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt, and more, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, Lorin Maazel, Carlos Kleiber, and Giuseppe Sinopoli. See you at the symphony!
Tuesday on Classical Café, join George Leef for this week’s Legendary Performer:
French conductor Ernest Ansermet.
And on Wednesday, (June 11th between 11am-12pm ET), Chrissy Keuper will fill in for George and will give away tickets to see cello-phenomenon HAUSER on his The Rebel is Back Tour. Tune in to win!
On this date in classical music history:
Otto Nicolai in a lithograph by Joseph Kriehuber, c. 1842. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of German composer Otto Nicolai, born Carl Otto Ehrenfried Nicolai in Königsberg, Prussia, in 1810. Nicolai studied in Berlin and had his first musical successes in Germany and then Rome as a musician to the Prussian embassy there. He is best known for his operas, which he began writing while in Italy (and for a while, he was better known in Italy for his operas than Giuseppe Verdi); Nicolai’s most famous opera (and the only one not sung in Italian) is his version of the Shakespeare comedy, The Merry Wives of Windsor (Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor). In 1841, Nicolai became court conductor in Vienna; he was a co-founder of the Philharmonic Society in 1842 (now the Vienna Philharmonic); and was named conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic in 1847. In 1849, he was elected as a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Arts (on what turned out to be the day of his very sudden death from a stroke).