This Week at The Classical Station
by Chrissy Keuper
Saturday and Sunday, 19-20 July 2025
WEEKEND! Wonderful. We’re here to spend time with you, whatever you may have planned.
Including:
Saturday On Point features the classic ballet The Three-Cornered Hat by Manuel de Falla, packed with fiery dance rhythms, Andalusian color, and sharp wit. Join Peggy Powell at 1pm ET for the full ballet and lots of other classical favorites.
At 6pm ET, Haydn Jones has more of your requests and special dedications on the Saturday Evening Request Program.
(The playlist is here and you can make requests and dedications for next week’s request programs here.)
Start your sacred Sunday morning at 8am ET with Great Sacred Music, featuring Felix Mendelssohn’s Elijah, performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus with Robert Shaw conducting and baritone soloist Thomas Hampson.
And at 6pm ET, Tom Hayakawa is your host for the best in new and recent classical releases on Preview!, featuring Tarmo Peltokoski conducting the German Chamber Orchestra in a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony Number 35 in D Major, “Haffner,” and a Nash Ensemble performance of Claude Debussy’s Cello Sonata in D Minor.
On these dates in the history of classical music:
Garret Wesley, 1st Earl of Mornington. (Date and artist unknown – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Anglo-Irish composer (and politician) Garret Wesley, 1st Earl of Mornington, was born in County Meath on July 19, 1735. Lord Mornington was an extremely talented violinist and began composing music in his early childhood. He attended Trinity College Dublin and was the school’s first Professor of Music (elected in 1764); he is remembered for his glees and some Anglican chant, but he also composed operas and orchestral music.
Nicola Benedetti with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, c. 2021. (Photo by Martin Shields)
And a very Happy Birthday to Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti, born July 20, 1987, in West Kilbride, North Ayrshire. Benedetti began studying violin at the age of four; at eight, she became the leader of the National Children’s Orchestra of Great Britain. She attended the Yehudi Menuhin School for young musicians in England and has been a virtuoso since the end of her first year there in 1998. Benedetti won the UK’s Brilliant Prodigy Competition in 2002 and the BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2004. She tours, performs, and records with orchestras all over Europe and the U.S., and is the founder of music education charity The Benedetti Foundation. Benedetti was also the first woman named Festival Director of the Edinburgh International Festival in 2022.
Friday, 18 July 2025
Happy Friday, Listeners!
Join us to hear listener requests and dedications all day on All-Request Friday (and we’ll be playing more tomorrow on the Saturday Evening Request Program).
What’s on the playlist?
I want to make requests and dedications for next week!
On this date in classical music history:
Yvonne Desportes, c. 1930. (Press photo – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of French pianist and composer Yvonne Desportes, born in Coburg, Germany, in 1907. Desportes was 11 years old when she began studies at the Paris Conservatoire in 1918; until 1932, she attended the École Normale de Musique and then the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris. Desportes won the Premier Prix in harmony in 1927; the Premier Prix in fugue in 1928; the Deuxième Second Grand Prix in 1930; and the Premier Grand Prix de Rome in 1932. Paul Dukas and Marcel Dupré were among Desportes’ instructors. She also taught at the Conservatoire de Paris, wrote music textbooks, and composed more than 500 works which included instrumental compositions, vocal works, and operas.
Thursday, 17 July 2025
A very, very Happy Friday Eve to all of you!
Come celebrate with us this evening with Thursday Night Opera House, featuring a 1972 recording of Richard Bonynge conducting the Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and amazing soloists in Gaetano Donizetti’s tragic Lucia di Lammermoor, set in 17th-century Scotland, amidst a bitter feud between the Ashton and Ravenswood families. Lucia (Joan Sutherland) is an Ashton and is being forced into marriage by her brother Enrico (Sherrill Milnes), but she and Edgardo (Luciano Pavarotti), a Ravenswood, are secretly in love.
Join Dr. Jay Pierson at 7pm ET for this beautiful and tragic opera.
On this day in the history of classical music:
Dawn Upshaw. (Photo by Brooke Irish – Courtesy of Colbert Artists Management)
Happy Birthday to American soprano Dawn Upshaw, born in 1960 in Nashville, Tennessee. Upshaw studied voice at Illinois Wesleyan University, the Manhattan School of Music in New York City, and the Aspen Music School. In 1984, she won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and entered the Metropolitan Opera Young Artists Development Program; she won the Walter M. Naumburg Competition in 1985. Since 1984, she has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera more than 300 times. In addition, Upshaw has received a number of Grammy Awards and several of her recordings have won the Edison Award. Her repertoire spans the Baroque to contemporary classical music. She founded Bard College Conservatory’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program in 2006 and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2007. She is head of the Vocal Arts Program at the Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts and is an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.
Wednesday, 16 July 2025
Hello, All!
Come spend some time with some great classical music.
On this date in classical music history:
Bella Davidovich after a performance in the Netherlands, c. 1966. (Press photo – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
A very Happy Birthday to Soviet-American pianist Bella Davidovich, born in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, in 1928. Davidovich began piano lessons when she was six years old and by the age of nine, she was a soloist. At 11, she moved to Moscow to concentrate on her piano studies and was admitted into the Moscow Conservatory at 18. Davidovich shared first prize in the 1949 International Chopin Piano Competition and then went on to tour and perform with every major orchestra in Russia and Eastern Europe, including 28 years as a soloist with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra. She was also a teacher at the Moscow Conservatory and at the Juilliard School of Music after she moved to the U.S. in 1978 and made her performance debut at Carnegie Hall in 1979. She has toured and performed extensively since then and played with the world’s best orchestras while also teaching.