This Week at The Classical Station

This Week at The Classical Station

by Chrissy Keuper

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Saturday and Sunday, 22-23 March 2025

It’s the weekend, and we are honored to spend it with you.

 

Saturday:

Saturday On Point features wonderful music for dancers on the stage, including the ballet Le Corsaire by Adolphe Adam, a tale of piracy and rebellion. Join Peggy Powell at 1pm ET.

And at 6pm ET, Haydn Jones hosts the Saturday Evening Request Program, chock-full of requests and dedications from your fellow listeners. Take a look at the playlist and make requests for next week.

 

Sunday:

This week’s Great Sacred Music features a recording of the Voices of Ascension Chorus and Orchestra and the Young Singers of Pennsylvania performing Te Deum by Hector Berlioz, along with other selections to make your Sunday morning sacred, including performances by the Choir of St. Marylebone; Gloriae Dei Cantores; and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, with works by Georg Frederic Handel; Sergei Rachmaninoff; Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina; and more.

Join us at 8am ET, right after Sing for Joy.

At 6pm ET, Tom Hayakawa hosts Preview!, featuring recent releases from the classical music world, including a 2025 recording of Cappella Amsterdam performing works by Renaissance composer Orlande de Lassus, plus the music of Wenzel Thomas Matiegka performed by guitarist David Starobin; the Brabant Ensemble performs sacred music of Francisco Guerrero; and The Sixteen with Harry Christophers perform Charles Villiers Stanford’s Nine Irish Folksongs.

Tune in to hear the latest recordings of cherished favorites AND newly-discovered works.

 

On these dates in the history of classical music:

English pianist Dame Fanny Waterman was born March 22, 1920, in Leeds, where she became an early student of the piano and then won a scholarship to attend the Royal College of Music. Waterman’s virtuoso career began while she was a student; in 1941, she opened the concert season with the Leeds Symphony Society and then appeared the next year at The BBC Proms. Like many musicians of the time, Waterman’s performance career was disrupted by World War II, but it was the beginning of her career as a teacher; she ultimately became Director of the Postgraduate Certificate in Advanced Piano Performance at Leeds College of Music (until 2006) and she gave masterclasses worldwide. In the early 1960s, Waterman co-founded the Leeds International Piano Competition and served as artistic director; she was also chair of the competition jury from 1981 to 2015 and a jury member for other international competitions.

And Austrian double-bassist and composer Johannes Matthias Sperger was born March 23, 1750, in Feldsberg. Sperger began his musical training in earnest in his teenage years, composing and performing as a soloist in the Hofkapelle of the Archbishop of Pressburg and then as a member of Vienna’s Tonkünstler Sozietät (Society of Musicians); the Hofkapelle of count Ludwig von Erdödy; and as first contrabassist of the Mecklenburg Schwerin Hofkapelle. Sperger was a prolific composer and he wrote at least 44 symphonies; numerous concertos for various instruments (especially for contrabass instruments like the double-bass); sonatas; dances; and cantatas and other choral works.

 

 

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Friday, 21 March 2025

Happy Friday, Listeners!

It’s 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). Check the playlists to see what other listeners have chosen for us to hear and then make your own requests and dedications for next week.

 

HEADS-UP: Ticket Giveaway

Next Wednesday on Classical Café (March 26th, between 11am-12pm ET), George Leef will give away a pair of tickets to Carolina Ballet’s world premiere of Alice in Wonderland, a journey down the rabbit hole through choreography by Gianna Reisen and set design by artist Rebecca Rebouché.

Tune in and win tickets while you listen to great music!

 

On today’s date in classical music history:

It’s the birthdate of Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky in Karevo, Toropets (south of St. Petersburg) in 1839. His mother was a pianist and she gave Mussorgsky and his brother their first lessons on the instrument. Mussorgsky developed his skills quickly, performed often for family and friends, and was 12 when he published his first work, Porte-enseigne Polka for solo piano. As a teenaged student at St. Petersburg Cadet School of the Guards, he managed to continue composing and also developed strong interests in history and philosophy. Mussorgsky was commissioned by the Preobrazhensky Regiment of the Russian Imperial Guard in 1856; he met Alexander Borodin later that year when they were both posted in a local military hospital and the two became friends, collaborators, and fellow champions of Russian music (both were members of the group of composers known as The Five). Mussorgsky gave up his commission a couple of years later to focus solely on composing, inspired by music studies with Mily Balakirev, founding member of The Five, and by Russian history and folklore. He wrote hundreds of compositions that include some of the most recognizable works in the genre: songs, choral music, and operas (Boris Godunov, 1868); orchestral works (like the tone poem Night on Bald Mountain, 1867); and works for piano (including the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition, 1874).

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Thursday, 20 March 2025

It’s Friday Eve, All. Thank you for spending the week with us!

 

Thursday Night Opera House is an archival broadcast by the late Al Ruocchio (from 2005), featuring the 1981 recording of Bruno Bartoletti conducting the National Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Opera Chorus, and extraordinary soloists in Amilcare Ponchielli’s La Gioconda. In 17th-century Venice, street singer La Gioconda (Montserrat Caballe) is in love with exiled Enzo Grimaldo (Luciano Pavarotti) and is pursued by the obsessed Barnaba (Sherill Milnes). Join us at 7pm ET to find out what happens in this gorgeous and tragic opera.

 

And tomorrow is All-Request Friday, so check out the playlist to see what your fellow listeners have chosen for you, tune in to hear all the great music and special dedications, and then make your own requests and special dedications for next week.

 

On this day in classical music history:

A very Happy Birthday to South Korean pianist Yunchan Lim, born in Siheung, Gyeonggi Province, in 2004. Lim attended the Music Academy of Seoul Arts Center and the Korea National University of Arts and then became the youngest winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2022. The next year, Lim transferred to New England Conservatory of Music in Boston (where he remains a student) and signed on with the DECCA music label; his first album, Chopin: Études, won the 2024 Gramophone Classical Music Awards Piano Award. He is also an Apple Music Global Ambassador.

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Wednesday, 19 March 2025

 

Listeners, our Spring Membership Drive will be coming up soon and if you’ve never donated before, please consider it now. We rely on our listeners to support us 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. And the sooner we reach our fundraising goal for operating costs, the sooner we can get back to our regularly-scheduled programming:  Great classical music, and nothing but – and it’s all better with music, right?

Donate anytime, right here.

 

On this date in classical music history:

It’s the birthdate of Irish-English composer Elizabeth Machonchy (Dame Elizabeth Machonchy LeFanu), born in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, in 1907. Machonchy spent most of her childhood in Howth, Ireland, and began music studies in Dublin in piano, harmony, and counterpoint; she was 16 when she was accepted into London’s Royal College of Music. She wrote more than 200 works, including a cantata, The Land (1929); her Symphony for Double String Orchestra (1954); and her cycle of 13 string quartets, composed from 1932 until 1983. Machonchy was highly influenced by Béla Bartók; is much-compared to Ludwig van Beethoven and Benjamin Britten; and is considered one of the finest composers from Great Britain or Ireland. She was elected Chair of the Composers Guild of Great Britain in 1959 (and was the first woman to hold the post), then President of the Society for the Promotion of New Music following the death of Benjamin Britten in 1976.

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Tuesday, 18 March 2024

Good day, Listeners! Thank you so much for listening to great classical music on The Classical Station and for supporting us since 1978.

 

(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:

It’s the birthdate of Serbian pianist and composer Ljubica Marić, born in Kragujevac in 1909 in what was Yugoslavia. Marić studied composition at the State Conservatory in Prague under Josef Suk and was the first Serbian to receive a diploma in the subject (1929). She continued her studies in Berlin in conducting (where she met Dmitri Shostakovich and Béla Bartók, who performed and championed her compositions) and was then the first woman to conduct the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra. A coming war and Marić’s involvement with the Yugoslav Communist movement delayed her career, though she found time to compose during the years of World War II when she was settled in Belgrade; she then taught at the University of Belgrade (1945-1967). Marić was highly inspired by music from the Byzantine church, which she incorporated into both sacred and secular music; she is considered a predecessor of composers Arvo Pärt and John Tavener; and she is certainly the best-known Serbian composer of the 20th century.

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Monday, 17 March 2025

It’s a new week. We can do it. Great classical music helps.

 

This week’s Monday Night at the Symphony features recordings of the Houston Symphony with works by Johannes Brahms, Cesar Franck, and Silvestre Revueltas, conducted by Andres Orozco-Estrada, Christoph Eschenbach, and Sergiu Comissiona.
Meet us at the symphony at 8pm ET.

 

 

Tomorrow (Tuesday) on Classical Café, George Leef presents his weekly Legendary Performer feature: American conductor Maurice Abravanel.

 

 

And on Wednesday (March 19th, between 11am-12pm ET), George 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 this date in the history of classical music:

It’s the birthdate of French harpsichordist, organist, singer, and composer Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre in 1665 in Saint-Louis-en-l’Île, Paris. Jacquet’s grandfather and father were harpsichord makers and her father gave her her first music lessons. She was five when she performed for King Louis XIV at the palace of Versailles; she was made a musician in the King’s court and continued her education there until she married in 1684. Jacquet de La Guerre taught music lessons, composed music, and performed in concerts throughout Paris and was quite well-known as a highly improvisational musician. Her first published work (Premier livre de pièces de clavecin, 1687) was one of the few collections of works for harpsichord printed in France in the 17th century. She also composed a ballet (lost); an opera (Céphale et Procris; its 1694 production was the first staging in France of an opera written by a woman); quite a few songs and cantatas; and a number of sonatas for various instruments, which are among the earliest French sonatas composed.