Classical Music on WFCR

88.5FM WFCR broadcasts a wide selection of the most appealing classical music from every era, with special emphasis on new releases and music of timely interest. Tune in for Classical Music weekdays with John Montanari and Walter Carroll, Saturday Opera from the Metropolitan, Chicago Lyric and other leading houses, Overnight Classical with Peter Van de Graaff, Sunday Baroque with Suzanne Bona, and Sunday Classical Music with Walter Carroll.

On Sunday, September 5, at 12:00 noon, WFCR will begin a weekly broadcast of the six classical concerts of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra's 2009/2010 season. Click here for more information and program information.

For your convenience, WFCR provides playlists of all of its classical music. Here you can find out exactly what you heard on any of our classical shows, with links provided for more information on the composers and performers. You can access these playlists here.

In the spring of 2010, WFCR invited listeners to vote for their top classical music pieces and created the second WFCR Listener's Choice Classical Countdown. Over several days in May, we counted down your picks from Vivaldi's Concerto in D Major, to Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. Click here to see the results.

Below, you can view the playlist of the currently playing program.

88.5FM WFCR begins weekly broadcast of Springfield Symphony Orchestra's 2009/2010 Season

On Sunday, September 5, at 12:00 noon, WFCR will begin a weekly broadcast of the six classical concerts of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra's 2009/2010 season. Maestro Kevin Rhodes, in his ninth season with the SSO, brings his tremendous musicianship and vitality to works from the classical era to the mid-20th century, with an accent on the romantic era that produced so many of the most popular symphonic masterworks. Including splendid contributions from three instrumental soloists, several talented vocalists and the Springfield Symphony Chorus, these six concerts make for very fine listening.

For their Opening Night Red Carpet Gala, to be broadcast on September 5, the Springfield Symphony Orchestra chose a rarely-heard masterwork of large-scale musical romanticism, Franz Liszt's A Faust Symphony. Tenor Alan W. Schneider and the Springfield Symphony Men's Chorus will be heard at the conclusion. The concert opens with a famous operatic excerpt by Liszt's son-in-law, "The Ride of the Valkyries" from Richard Wagner's Die Walküre.

On September 12, up-and-coming violinist Janet Sung will be heard with Kevin Rhodes and the Springfield Symphony Orchestra in a work by turns melodic and fiery, the Violin Concerto by American master Samuel Barber. Otherwise, the program is Russian, including the Overture to the opera Ruslan and Ludmilla by the father of Russian romantic music, Mikhail Glinka, and the dance-filled Symphony No. 3 by Tchaikovsky, known as the "Polish" for the polonaise rhythms at the symphony's conclusion.

Romanticism predominates in the September 19 Springfield Symphony broadcast, which gets off to a rousing start with the Overture to bel canto master Gaetano Donizetti's opera Roberto Devereux. Russian pianist Alexander Ghindin, first prize-winner at the Tchaikovsky and Cleveland competitions, takes the virtuoso solo part in 18 year-old Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1. One of Brahms's sunniest works, his Symphony No. 2, concludes the program.

In Charles Ives's The Unanswered Question, which opens the concert to be broadcast on September 26, a solitary trumpet asks the eternal question of existence, only to be answered with indifference, ridicule or utter silence. What follows in the concert, however, are two works to make one happy to be alive: Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 with piano soloist Sara Davis Buechner, and Mozart's "Great" Mass in C minor, with the Springfield Symphony Chorus and four talented soloists joining in.

We're back with the romantics on October 3, starting with one of the greatest of Gioachino Rossini's celebrated Overtures, that to his tragic masterwork Semiramide. SSO favorite Jeffrey Biegel then takes the formidable solo in Tchaikovsky's popular Piano Concerto No. 1. And the rich, Wagnerian sonorities of César Franck's Symphony in D minor bring the concert to a very satisfying conclusion.

For the final Sprigfield Symphony broadcast of October 10, Maestro Rhodes conducts the alpha and omega of Beethoven's symphonic output. In the Symphony No. 1, Beethoven's adds his unique voice to the classical symphonic tradition of Haydn and Mozart. In his Symphony No. 9, "Choral", Beethoven created am inspiring masterwork whose message of joy and brotherhood resounds as powerfully today as ever. And what a performance! Be sure not to miss it, or indeed, any of these six broadcasts by one of the best things our area has going for it.