This Week at The Classical Station
by Chrissy Keuper
Saturday and Sunday, 15-16 March 2025
Welcome to the weekend, Listeners! We are here for you, no matter what you have planned.
Saturday:
At 1pm ET, Peggy Powell is your host for Saturday On Point, featuring La Boutique fantasque (The Fantastic Toyshop) by Ottorino Respighi (who based the music on piano works by Giochino Rossini), and more wonderful music for dancers on the stage.
Then, join Haydn Jones at 6pm ET for the Saturday Evening Request Program and more of your favorites and dedications for the week.
You can find the playlist here and make requests for next week’s programs here.
Sunday:
This week’s Great Sacred Music includes the Cambridge Singers, the Bach Collegium, and the Estonian Philharmonic, as well as works by Johann Sebastian Bach; Michael Haydn; and others. Our featured composition is Arvo Pärt’s Stabat Mater, performed by Theatre of Voices. Join us at 8am ET, right after Sing for Joy.
And tune in at 6pm ET for Preview! with Tom Hayakawa, featuring some of the latest releases from the classical music world, including Chopin’s Études, Opus 25, played by Yunchan Lim, the youngest-ever winner of the Van Cliburn competition. The Blue Heron Renaissance Choir performs three songs by Johannes Ockeghem, and Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi conducts the Royal Philharmonic in a recording from Nausicaa, Valley of the Wind (1984).
On these dates in the history of classical music:
Gaetano Gaspari in a drawing by Federico Parisini, Bologna, c. 1890. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Italian composer and music historian Gaetano Gaspari was born March 15, 1807, in Bologna. Gaspari was a student at Bologna’s Liceo Musicale (1820-1827, now the Conservatorio Giovanni Battista Martini) and was a prize-winner in piano and counterpoint competitions. During his education, Gaspari was also organist at San Martino, Bologna; after he graduated he was named conductor of the municipal orchestra; maestro di cappella of the Collegiata at Pieve di Cento; chorus master of the Imola Cathedral; and voice teacher at the Liceo Musicale. Gaspari compiled a classification of the Liceo’s music collections and the Catalogo della Biblioteca del Liceo musicale di Bologna (1890).
Christa Ludwig in Elektra by Richard Strauss at the Paris Opera, c. 1987. (Photograph by Roger Viollet – Rex)
German mezzo-soprano (and sometime soprano) Christa Ludwig was born in Berlin on March 16, 1928. Ludwig’s father Anton was a baritone (later a tenor) and an opera administrator, and her mother Eugenie was a mezzo-soprano with the Aachen Opera (and young Christa’s first voice teacher). Ludwig studied piano, cello, flute and music theory at Aachen Conservatory and then voice at Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts. Ludwig made her opera debut with Oper Frankfurt when she was 18 (1946) and went on to sing with the Staatstheater Darmstadt; the Staatsoper Hannover; the Vienna State Opera (from 1955-1994); the Salzburg Festival; the Lyric Opera of Chicago; the Metropolitan Opera; and other companies besides, and made many recordings. She is considered one of opera’s most distinguished and significant 20th-century singers.
Friday, 14 March 2025
It’s Friday, Listeners! All-Request Friday, in fact (10am-10pm ET), and we’ll do it again tomorrow on the Saturday Evening Request Program (6pm-12am ET). Check the playlists to see what will play when, and make your requests and dedications for next week.
HEADS-UP: Ticket Giveaway
Next Wednesday (March 19th, between 11am-12pm ET) during Classical Café, George Leef will give away a pair of tickets to Burning Coal Theatre’s co-production of Being Chaka with creators TÉA Artistry. Chaka is a new 16-year-old African-American student in a private school where he is haunted by generational trauma and systemic racism. Tune in for some tickets to this powerful show.
On today’s date in classical music history:
Josephine Lang. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of German composer Josephine Lang in Munich in 1815. Lang’s father was a violinist and her mother an opera singer who gave Josephine her earliest piano lessons. Lang began giving piano lessons herself at age 11, when she had already been composing for several years. Family friends Felix Mendelssohn, Ferdinand Hiller, and Robert Schumann helped get her compositions published. Lang was in poor health from her birth and struggled throughout her life to keep up with music and her own education; but she became a prominent composer in her time, and she continued to compose and teach piano lessons until her death in 1880.
Thursday, 13 March 2025
Happy Friday Eve, Listeners!
Tomorrow is All-Request Friday, so check out the playlist to see what your fellow listeners have asked to hear, then make your requests and dedications for next week right here.
Friday Eve also means that tonight is our weekly edition of Thursday Night Opera House with a 1995 recording of Leonard Slatkin conducting the Munich Radio Orchestra, the Chorus of the Bavarian Radio, and incredible soloists in Charles Gounod’s opera Roméo et Juliette. The Shakespearean tragedy comes to life (and death) with Placido Domingo and Ruth Ann Swenson in the title roles. Join Dr. Jay Pierson at 7pm ET for the drama and the gorgeous music.
On this day in classical music history:
Susanna Mälkki with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. (Photo by Stefan Bremer – Courtesy of susannamalkki.com)
A very Happy Birthday to Finnish cellist and conductor Susanna Mälkki, born in 1969 in Helsinki. Mälkki was an early student of violin, piano, and cello, but she settled on the cello and also studied conducting at the Sibelius Academy and the Royal Academy of Music, London. She won the Turku National Cello Competition (1994) and held the chair of principal cellist for the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra from 1995 to 1998. Mälkki was artistic director of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra until 2005 and joined the Ensemble InterContemporain (2004-2013), becoming the first woman to be music director of the ensemble in 2006. She made her conducting debut at the 2007 BBC Proms and became the first woman to conduct an opera at La Scala, Milan, in 2011 when she led the world premiere of Luca Francesconi’s Quartett. Mälkki has conducted the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra; the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra; the Los Angeles Philharmonic (the first woman named principal guest conductor); the Metropolitan Opera (the first woman conductor featured in the Met’s Opera Live in HD series); the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra (again, the first woman to hold the orchestra’s position as chief conductor); and a number of other orchestras around the world, and she continues to perform and record.
Wednesday, 12 March 2025
We appreciate you, Listeners!
Our Spring Membership Drive will be coming up soon and if you’ve never donated before, please consider it now. We rely on your support as we find the best recordings of the great classical music that we all LOVE and keep our tech up to date so that those recordings sound wonderful. We are so lucky to have donors who want to give multiple times during the drive (THANK YOU ALL!). One way to do that is to become an angel and match the donations of your fellow listeners.
Contact our Membership Department to find out more.
Dear Fans of our Classical Conundrum,
Due to popular demand, we now have a page devoted to the Classical Conundrum on our website!
Quiz yourself (and those around you) on classical music trivia and build your knowledge of the music that we all love. Enjoy!
On this date in classical music history:
Carolus Antonius Fodor in a drawing by Hendrik Willem Caspari, c. 1780-1820. (Photo by Rijksmuseum – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of Dutch pianist, composer, and conductor Carolus Antonius Fodor (also known as Anton Fodor) in 1768 in Venlo. He was 13 when he and his older brother moved to Paris so that Fodor could finish his studies in music; they returned to Amsterdam in 1790, where he supported himself by giving concerts in Amsterdam and The Hague and becoming quite a famed piano virtuoso. Fodor was named conductor of the orchestra of Felix Meritis in 1801 and as a member of the orchestra of the Eruditio Musica the next year, and in 1808, he was appointed as head of what is now the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Fodor published three symphonies; eight piano concerti; some songs; and lots of chamber music featuring the piano.
Tuesday, 11 March 2024
A very good day to all of you!
We thank you so much for listening to The Classical Station and for supporting us since we went on the air in 1978. It is such an honor to play great classical music for you, all day long, every day.
And saying more about great classical music:
Get those requests and dedications in
for All-Request Friday and the Saturday Evening Request Program!
On this date in classical music history:
Astor Piazzolla and his orchestra on a broadcast of Canal 13, c. 1963. (Photo by Canal 13, Archivo General de la Nación Argentina – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the birthdate of Argentinian composer and bandoneon virtuoso Astor Piazzolla, born in Mar del Plata in 1921. Piazzolla’s family moved to New York City when he was still a very young child (1925). He listened to his father’s tango records and was also able to hear classical music and jazz, and when he was eight years old, his father found a bandoneon in a pawn shop and brought it home to him. Piazzolla composed his first tango at age 11 (La Catinga, 1932) and then began lessons with a former student of Sergei Rachmaninov, classical pianist Béla Wilda who taught Piazzolla how to play the music of J.S. Bach on his bandoneon. The family returned to Mar del Plata in 1936, and Piazzolla played in various tango orchestras. He was 17 when he moved himself to Buenos Aires and joined the orchestra of bandoneonist Aníbal Troilo, then became Troilo’s arranger and some-time piano-player. Piazzolla started music lessons with Alberto Ginastera in 1941 and spent his days reading scores by classical composers and observing rehearsals of the orchestra of the Teatro Colón while playing in the tango clubs at night. He also began piano lessons and began composing and then recording tangos in earnest. Piazzolla founded his Orquesta Tipica in 1946 and began composing music for films, then dropped everything (including the tango)in the early 1950s to focus on developing his own style. In 1953, he won a grant from the French government to study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, who ultimately encouraged him to pursue his tango composition and performance. Piazzolla went back to Argentina and formed the Orquesta de Cuerdas (String Orchestra) and the Octeto Buenos Aires; his classical studies gave a chamber-music feel to his tangos, which became known as nuevo tango and were symbolic of both musical and political change in Argentina. The music was controversial, but popular. Piazzolla toured in the U.S. and the Caribbean and in 1960, he returned to Argentina, founded multiple ensembles and orchestras, and composed and recorded tango after tango after tango. He formed another Quinteto in 1978 and toured the world for the next 11 years, which made him incredibly famous and synonymous with the tango, while he also composed works for chamber ensemble and orchestra. Piazzolla composed, performed, and recorded until he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in 1990, from which he never regained consciousness (he died in 1992). His works revolutionized the tango and he was certainly the world’s foremost composer of tango music in the 20th century.
Monday, 10 March 2025
It’s going to be a great week, All! Spend it with us and hear some great classical music.
This week’s Monday Night at the Symphony features recordings of the Boston Pops Orchestra and music by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Hector Berlioz, Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky, and more, conducted by Arthur Fiedler, John Williams, and the ensemble’s current Music Director, Keith Lockhart. Meet us at the symphony at 8pm ET.
Tomorrow (Tuesday) on Classical Café, George Leef presents his weekly Legendary Performer feature; this week, it’s American cellist Lynn Harrell.
And on Wednesday (March 12th between 11am-12pm ET), George will give away a pair of tickets to the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle’s La Vida Breve, the story of Salud, a young Romani woman who is desperately in love. The drama is set to music by Manuel de Falla, with spicy dancing by Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana and songs in Spanish with English supertitles.
On this date in classical music history:
Pablo de Sarasate, c. 1890. (Photo by Walery – Courtesy of National Portrait Gallery NPG Ax38507)
It’s the birthdate of Spanish violinist, composer, and conductor Pablo de Sarasate (born Pablo Martín Melitón de Sarasate y Navascués) in 1844 in Pamplona, Navarre. Sarasate’s father was a violinist who gave the young virtuoso his first lessons; Sarasate was a prodigy at the instrument and gave his first public concert when he was eight years old. Those impressed by the performance put forward the funds for Sarasate to study in Madrid for the next few years, where he came to the attention of Queen Isabella II. When he was 12, his parents sent him to Paris to study with Jean-Delphin Alard at the Conservatoire de Paris, but his mother died of a heart attack near the border of Spain and France and Sarasate himself was diagnosed with cholera. The Spanish Consul nursed him and then paid Sarasate’s way to Paris, where he was accepted into the Conservatoire. Sarasate competed for the Conservatoire’s Premier Prix when he was 17 and won first prize; he had already made his Paris debut as a concert violinist and debuted in London after winning the prize. Throughout his career, Sarasate toured and performed in Europe, North America, and South America, and he composed more than 50 works which all feature the violin.