This Week at The Classical Station

This Week at The Classical Station

by Chrissy Keuper

---

Saturday and Sunday, 26-27 July 2025

Listeners, come and spend your hard-earned weekend with some wonderful classical music.

 

This weekend:

Saturday On Point features the ballet Les Syphides, a non-narrative ballet based on music by Frederic Chopin that was orchestrated by Alexander Glazunov. Join Peggy Powell at 1pm ET.

 

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 your requests and dedications for next week’s programs here.)

 

For your sacred Sunday, join us at 8am ET for Great Sacred Music. This week, the show features 7 Magnificat Antiphons by Arvo Pärt and Anton Bruckner’s Mass No. 2 in E minor for Choir and Winds. 

 

And at 6pm ET, Tom Hayakawa has new and recent classical releases on Preview!, featuring Les Delices performing J.S. Bach’s Sonata in G minor, BWV 1030b, and the Rautio Piano Trio with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Trio in B flat, Op. 11.

 

On these dates in the history of classical music:

A very Happy Birthday to Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt, born 26 July 1958 in Ottawa. Hewitt is known as one of the world’s busiest pianists, who began studying piano at age three and won her first scholarship at age five, entering the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto in 1963. She completed her studies at the University of Ottawa and was a prizewinner in competitions in Europe, Canada, and the U.S., and her win at the 1985 Toronto International Bach Piano Competition launched her career. She is the first woman to win the City of Leipzig Bach Medal and she received the Wigmore Hall Gold Medal after performing there more than 80 times. Hewitt founded and serves as Artistic Director of the Trasimeno Music Festival in Umbria, Italy, and she is Ambassador for Orkidstra, an inner-city social development program in Ottawa. Hewitt gives master classes worldwide and continues to perform. She is also a Visiting Fellow of Peterhouse College, Cambridge.

Hungarian pianist, composer, and conductor Ernst von Dohnányi (born Dohnányi Ernő) was born 27 July 1877, in Pozsony (today Bratislava, Slovakia). Dohnányi began studying music with his father, a mathematics professor and an amateur cellist, then moved to Budapest in 1894 to study piano and composition at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music. His first published composition was the Piano Quintet in C minor, a work that Johannes Brahms performed and happily promoted. Dohnányi made his public debut in Berlin in 1897, which led to a tour of Europe, England, and the U.S., making his debut in 1898 with the St. Louis Symphony. He taught at the Hochschule in Berlin from 1905 to 1915 while still composing and performing. He founded and organized the first International Franz Liszt Piano Competition In 1933; served as Director of the Budapest Academy of Music from 1934 until 1943. In 1949, Dohnányi joined the faculty of Florida State University in the School of Music and became an American citizen in 1955 and gave his final performance at the university in 1960.

---

Friday, 25 July 2025

It’s Friday, Listeners!

Join us to hear special requests and dedications from your fellow listeners on All-Request Friday (and we’ll do it again tomorrow on the Saturday Evening Request Program).

Here are the playlists.
Make your requests and dedications for next week here.

 

 

In the latest edition of Classical Considerations, Matthew Young reminds us that in a world increasingly vying for our attention, finding music that helps us focus can be transformative.

 

On this date in classical music history:

It’s the birthdate of Italian pianist, conductor, composer, and musicologist Gianandrea Gavanezzi in 1909 in Bergamo. Gavanezzi was a piano prodigy who began studies at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome at age 11, then studied composition at the Milan Conservatory. He was a composer of concerti, orchestral works, operas, and ballets until 1949 when he gave up composing and focused on conducting. He was a regular conductor with La Scala, Milan, from 1944 until the 1990s, and also served as conductor with the Rome Opera, as well as opera companies in Edinburgh; Chicago; Glyndebourne; Trieste; Palermo; Geneva; Ravenna; Turin; the Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires; and the Metropolitan Opera.

---

Thursday, 24 July 2025

Come celebrate Friday Eve with us at 7pm ET with Thursday Night Opera House**, featuring a 1984 recording of Riccardo Muti conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Ambrosian Opera Chorus, and incredible soloists in Gaetano Donizetti’s Don Pasquale. This comic opera is set in mid-19th century Rome and follows the exploits of Pasquale (Sesto Bruscantini), who is attempting to prevent his nephew Ernesto (Gosta Winbergh) from inheriting the family estate.

 

**(This is an archival broadcast by late TNOH host Al Ruocchio.)

 

On this day in classical music history:

It’s the birthdate of African-American mezzo-soprano Caterina Jarboro in 1898 in Wilmington, North Carolina. Following the death of her parents, Jarboro moved to Brooklyn, New York, to live with her aunt (1916), and she started taking music lessons. Her teachers soon recognized that Jarboro had an exceptional voice and she began a career on stage in musicals before moving to Europe for further music studies. She made her opera debut with the San Carlo Opera Company in 1930 at the Puccini Theater in Milan, Italy. In 1933, she was recruited by the Chicago Civic Opera for a performance at the New York Hippodrome Theater, where she was the first black opera singer to perform with a major company in the U.S. Jarboro stunned the audience and critics with her incredible voice at that performance, which opened up opportunities to perform regularly throughout Europe until 1941, when she returned to the U.S. and continued to sing in operas, concerts, and recitals, mostly in New York. She retired from performing in 1955.

---

Wednesday, 23 July 2025

Hello, Listeners!
We hope it’s a great week so far. Come join us for some wonderful music.

 

On this date in classical music history:

It’s the birthdate of American pianist and conductor Leon Fleisher in San Francisco, California, in 1928. Fleisher was studying piano at the age of four and began lessons with Artur Schnabel when he was nine. His major debut was at age 16 in a performance with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall under conductor Pierre Monteux, who called Fleisher the “pianistic find of the century.” Fleisher went on to be regarded as one of the most renowned pianists and teachers in the world (he taught for more than 60 years at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, the Curtis Institute of Music, and the Royal Academy of Music in Toronto), as well as a conductor. The Leon Fleisher Academy in Washington, DC, is named in his honor.

---

Tuesday, 22 July 2025

Thank you for supporting The Classical Station since 1978 and for helping us celebrate 47 years on the air.

We are honored to broadcast great classical music 24-hours a day for your listening pleasure, and we hope you’ll consider a gift of support.

 

On this date in the history of classical music:

It’s the birthdate of Italian-American soprano Licia Albanese in 1909 in Torre Pelosa. Albanese debuted in Milan in 1934 in Madama Butterfly as Cio-Cio-San, a role she performed more than 300 times with opera companies all over the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, where she sang lead roles from 1940 to 1966, and the San Francisco Opera from 1941 to 1961. She also sang a number of other roles and in addition to stage performances in operas, recitals, and concerts, she also performed for radio broadcasts with Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra and Alfredo Antonini, Richard Tucker, and musicians with the New York Philharmonic. Albanese was a highly celebrated performer throughout her career and was known for her beautiful voice and technical skill. She founded and chaired The Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation in 1974 to support young singers and artists and was a trustee of the Bagby Foundation. She also worked with the Juilliard School of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, and Marymount Manhattan College, and conducted master classes all over the world. Albanese was also a recipient of the National Medal of Honor for the Arts and of the Handel Medallion, the highest official honor given by the City of New York for contributions to cultural life.

---

Monday, 21 July 2025

Welcome to a new week, Listeners. We’re here with your soundtrack of great classical music.

 

This evening at 7pm ET, join Vince Tillona for Drop the Needle and the warmth of vinyl recordings. This week’s show joins Monday Night at the Symphony (8pm ET) in featuring the New York Philharmonic with all performances conducted by the legendary Leonard Bernstein.

 

 

 

 

Join George Leef on Tuesday during Classical Café for this week’s Legendary Performer:

Czech harpsichordist Zuzana Růžičková.

 

 

On this date in classical music history:

It’s the birthdate of Mexican violinist, pianist, and composer Daniel Ayala Pérez in 1906 in Abalá, Yucatán. Manuel Ponce was among his professors at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música, Mexico City from 1927 to 1932. Pérez’s professional career began at Salón México, a night club, and in the Orquesta Sinfónica de México. He co-founded the Grupo de los cuatro (Group of Four) composers in 1934; was appointed conductor of the Police Band in Mérida in 1940; founded the Orquesta Típica Yukalpetén in 1943; and then was appointed conductor of the Mérida Symphony Orchestra and director of the Yucatán Conservatory in 1944. In 1955, Pérez became director of the Instituto Superior de Música del Estado de Veracruz and worked for the Veracruz Institute of Fine Arts. His best known works are the symphonic poems Uchben X’coholte (1933, In an Ancient Cemetery) and Tribu (1934), but he also wrote ballets, vocal works, music for piano, chamber compositions, and other works for orchestra.