This Week at The Classical Station
by Chrissy Keuper
Friday + Weekend 20-22 June 2025
Happy All-Request Friday, Listeners!
Join us from 10am-8pm ET for all your favorites and special dedications.
Want to see what’s on the list?
Want to make requests and dedications for next week?
On this date in classical music history:
André Watts in rehearsal with the New York Philharmonic for one of Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts, c. 1962. (CBS Photo Archive, Getty Images)
It’s the birthdate of American-Hungarian pianist André Watts in Nuremberg, Allied-occupied Germany, in 1946. Watts’ father was a U.S. Army NCO and his mother a Hungarian pianist. Watts spent most of his childhood around European U.S. Army bases and began violin lessons at age four. By the time he was six, he had decided on the piano, and he debuted with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of ten. In order to inspire the young Watts to practice, his mother told him tales of Franz Liszt, which apparently worked: Watts’ career spanned more than 60 years and he performed with every major American orchestra and most of the other great orchestras of the world (by the mid-1970s, Watts was performing hundreds of times a year); he was a Grammy Award winner (1964, Best New Classical Artist); and he held the Jack I. and Dora B. Hamlin Endowed Chair in Music at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University.
Here’s what’s on the program for the weekend:
On Saturday, join Peggy Powell at 1pm ET for Saturday On Point, featuring the ballet Tales of Beatrix Potter by John Lanchbery.
And at 6pm ET, Haydn Jones has more of your requests and special dedications on the Saturday Evening Request Program. (See above for the playlist & request links.)
Then, kick your sacred Sunday morning off with James Steelmon and Great Sacred Music at 8am ET, with highlights from the Choir of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London; the Holland Boys’ Choir; and the English Chamber Orchestra, with works by Benjamin Britten, Charles Gounod, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and others.
And at 6pm ET, Tom Hayakawa is your host for the best in new and recent classical releases on Preview!, highlighting the Academy of Ancient Music and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Lodron concerto, K. 242; the Akedemie für Alte Musik Berlin and one of the last pieces of music written by Baroque composer Georg Philipp Telemann (he was 84 years old); and pianist Andrey Gugnin with Edvard Grieg’s Ballade, Op. 24, Variations on a Norwegian Melody.
Thursday, 19 June 2025
Happy Friday Eve to all of you!
Come celebrate with us this evening with Thursday Night Opera House, featuring a 1966 recording of Sir John Barbirolli conducting the Orchestra e Coro del Teatro dell’Opera di Roma and incredible soloists in Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. Cio-Cio-San, known as “Butterfly” (Renata Scotto), is a geisha who falls in love with and marries B.F. Pinkerton (Carlo Bergonzi), an American naval officer who abandons her after the wedding. She remains devoted to him until his return…with his American wife. Join us at 7pm ET for this classic tragic opera in a 2004 archival broadcast by the late Al Ruocchio.
On this day in classical music history:
Charles-Édouard Lefebvre, c. 1900. (Photographer unknown – Courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France)
It’s the birthdate of French composer Charles-Édouard Lefebvre in Paris in 1843. Lefebvre was a composition student at the Conservatoire de Paris (Charles Gounod and Ambroise Thomas were fellow students) and he won the Prix de Rome in 1870 for his cantata Le Jugement de Dieu; he was appointed director of the Conservatoire’s chamber music class in 1895. Lefebvre was perhaps best known for his choral works and operas, but he also wrote chamber and orchestral music.
Wednesday, 18 June 2025
Hello, Listeners!
Come listen to some great classical music with us.
On this date in classical music history:
Éva Marton as Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera, c. 1987. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
A very Happy Birthday to Hungarian soprano Éva Marton, born in Budapest in 1943. Marton was a voice student at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music and made her professional debuts in Madama Butterfly and The Golden Cockerel in the 1960s. She has specialized in several Wagnerian roles, as well as Puccini’s Turandot and Tosca, and has sung leading dramatic roles in the Hungarian State Opera; the Frankfurt Opera and Hamburg State Opera; La Scala, Milan; the Metropolitan Opera; and many others. Marton officially retired from opera performance in 2008, but she continues to teach at the Liszt Academy and is a recipient of the Persian Golden Lioness Lifetime Achievement Award in operatic music from The World Academy of Arts, Literature and Media (2006).
Monday, 16 June 2025
Hello, All! Come spend your week with some great classical music.
This evening at 7pm ET, join Vince Tillona for Drop the Needle and the warmth of vinyl recordings. On this week’s platter, some late 16th century antiphonal brass works by Giovanni Gabrieli. Yummy!
And at 8pm ET, Monday Night at the Symphony features the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. See you at the symphony!
Dame Myra Hess, c. 1940. (Photo by Howard Coster – Courtesy of National Portrait Gallery NPG x10674)
Tuesday on Classical Café, join George Leef for this week’s Legendary Performer, pianist Myra Hess.
And on Wednesday, (June 18th between 11am-12pm ET), George will give away tickets to the next 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!