Maryland's All-Classical Music Station
Key: A-Flat
Opus: 32
Conductor: Martyn Brabbins
Ensemble: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestr
Jonathan Plowright, piano
Hyperion, 67314
Key: G
Rafael Puyana, harpsichord
SanCtuS, 27
Opus: 114
Conductor: Ulf Schirmer
Ensemble: Munich Radio Orchestra
Michael Korstick, piano
CPO, 777373
Key: d
Michael Murray, organ
Telarc, 80286
Key: d
Opus: 42
Conductor: Stewart Kershaw
Ensemble: Auburn Symphony Orchestra
David Di Fiore,organ
Ambassador, 1019
Key: D
Opus: 89
Dana Muller, piano
Gary Steigerwalt, piano
Centaur, 2390
Conductor: Robert Black
Ensemble: Slovak Radio SO, Bratislava
Helena Vesterman, piano
MMC, 2009
Opus: 7
Sylvia Parker, piano
Centaur, 2811
Key: a
Robert Parkins, organ
Naxos, 8550824
November is a month where we are reminded to be thankful for all that we have in our lives. What are you grateful for?
Post below and share with us and your fellow WBJC members!
One member writes in suggesting we visit Sherwood Gardens in the Guilford neighborhood of Baltimore.
Taking a quick tour of their website, I found the tulips breathtaking! Their peak bloom is THIS WEEK folks!
Have any of you visited Sherwood Gardens recently? I think I might make a thermos of tea, grab my spinning wheel and invite one of my fiber-friends with a blanket to have a nice picnic soon!
Speaking of Fiber… are any of you going to the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival the first weekend of May?
Make sure to visit the Columbia Sip-n-Knit Hospitality Tent if you do! Those fantastic ladies (and gents!) are volunteering their time to give festival goers and nice shaded place to rest and refresh from all the hustle and bustle.
I think I might take a jaunt down there early that Sunday morning myself. 🙂
We love hearing from long-time members, but I’ll bet there are a few new ones from our recent drive out there who have some great ‘first time’ stories! If you’ve just discovered the WBJC Newsletter, we asked our readers in April to write in about their earliest musical experience and how it affected the music fan they are today. Please comment below, or use the “Contact Us” link above to tell us all about it!
When I was a young boy I loved watching and listening to my mother play the piano.It fascinated me to the point where I wanted to learn to play also. Back in the days when grocery stores had long play records where you would get one every week, I remember my dad coming home with the first volume of “The World’s Greatest Music.” It opened up a whole new chapter in my life and my destiny to become a professional musician. At first I wanted to become a conductor. As I listened to these records, I would often conduct using one of my Tinker Toy sticks.
I was born in Boston and went to my first Boston Pops concert at age nine. I was enthralled to not only be able to hear the music but to see all of the instruments playing right before my eyes! I was also taken to the Boston Symphony Youth Concerts and found that I especially liked piano concertos. This was the beginning of my serious decision to study music, especially the piano.
After graduating from high school, I went to the Boston Conservatory where I majored in piano and music education. Since those days I have had a very rewarding career in bringing the beauty of music to many people around the country knowing that music can touch hearts in a very special way.
I remember going to many performances of the Doyle Carte in New York when I was little. I always fell in love with the tenors. I wrote Thomas Round a fan letter. My mom said I had to tell that I was ten in the letter or he would think the I was some kind of a nut. I got a signed photograph.
I learned many of the songs. I could sing I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General at top speed. I remember a lot of the songs fifty years later. I don’t think I got that the operettas were satires. I am sad that there is no more Doyle Carte. It got to be in my blood, so to speak.
Today’s stories are beautiful reminders of how deeply intertwined family and music can be in our lives.
Does anyone out there take the time to pay it forward? I think a future write-in topic should be stories about how we influence the younger generations with our love of music. 🙂
Member Patrick Kelly of Centreville, MD writes: my first musical experience was…Liberace’ at the Painter’s Mill Music Hall. I was a little kid and my parents wanted to instill some exposure to more classical arts and, my Mom being a huge classical music enthusiast since childhood, felt this would be a worthwhile effort. No, it’s not classical music per se but over the years the significance of that evening has proved a touchstone to thinking outside the box.
Mom grew up in coal-country Morgantown, West Virginia…daughter of a coal miner barely scraping by when she got a part time job at the local grocer. I still have pics of her as a little girl in her ONE dress she owned and rag-doll…yes, it was mostly rags. The shop owner was a classical music enthusiast and when she heard it…it was the most beautiful thing she ever heard and was a fan for life. She wanted me to have one of those “wow” experiences, and face it, Liberace’ was a REAL experience.
I’ve explored many musical tastes over the years, from blues and bluegrass to a long-time deep love of most extreme and popular heavy metal and still love them all. But strangely enough classical-style was at the start and where I’ve returned now turning 50 yrs old. I owe much of this to Mom and Dad dragging me to see Liberace’ as a kid…and endearing the appreciation of classical music today and my continued sponsorship of WBJC. I owe all this to Mom, and I annually subscribe in her memory and eternal thanks, love and gratitude.
Is there a dark and tragic side? Yes; that of my Dad being handicapped with damaged hearing after a bout of scarlet fever as a child; he could never hear the beauty of classical music especially in his final days when I was to learn he was entirely deaf, so Mom had to instill the arts for BOTH of them.
Member Andy Kochis writes: I was maybe 8 to 10 years old. My parents took my brother and me to see family in the Boston area from where we lived in Maine. We first visited my aunt and uncle in Brighton. My uncle, an amazing man who came to the United States with only $7.00 in his pocket, and who left his only possession, a goat, behind when he boarded the ship for the journey. He was loving and kind and jovial. Self-taught, he was a founder of the Boston Ethical Society and played violin in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He looked at us kids (my brother was about a year younger than me), and said, “Would you like to hear a violin cry?” He started to play the sweetest, sadder, and saddest notes — not even a melody — you could ever hear. Tears streamed down my face. I’ll be 70 years old this year and that day in Brighton will never be forgotten.
What fun! I personally have enjoyed hearing from listeners about what helped shape their musical tastes and it got me thinking of my own story.
I was a fortunate child to grow up in such a culturally rich area. My first elementary school field trip was to see the Baltimore Symphony and they performed music from my favorite movie: Star Wars.
Afterwards, I begged my mother to let me learn to play the violin. I badly wanted to join the school band! She said no (cost prohibitive) and I joined the school chorus instead (I even made to All-County Choir several years in a row!) As I went through school, I picked up the guitar and piano, as well as dabbling with many other instruments. I even met my husband in one of those music classes (although he’s sworn me to secrecy about which instrument he played!)
As an adult, I decided to learn the violin and quickly realized the overriding reason my mother firmly said “no”. The NOISES that came out of that thing were DREADFUL! I had to wear ear plugs and practice in one of WBJC’s sound-deadening studios until I got the hang of it!
More of WBJC’s listeners share their first musical experiences with us:
My introduction to classical music came at Continental School #3, Elizabeth NJ. Time frame: 1940.
The music teacher, Mrs. Doe, taught us to read music and to sing. Some days, instead of pushing the piano into the classroom; Mrs. Doe carried a small portable record player. It played the old shellac records. The record player meant it was Music Appreciation class. What a treat! Over the years we learned to listen to and appreciate a wide selection of classical music. Music that still gives me pleasure. That is where I first heard The Moldau. Thus, when I stood on the Charles Bridge in Prague not too many years ago, I remembered Mrs. Doe, and I smiled.
Other resources; Metropolitan Opera House, the old one, offered student matinees. The house filled with students from NJ, NY and Connecticut for the performances at student rates. How we cheered when our schools were named.
WQXR in New York and the fabled Walter Damrosch program added to our knowledge of music.
Music is for a lifetime. And in our area WBJC helps us continue the enjoyment of music. Thank you.
My first musical experience was piano. I began taking piano lessons at age six and continued for the next 10 years. That experience imbued me with a love of classical music, especially overtures and symphonies. During that period, I imagined myself as an orchestra conductor. I had an orchestral score of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and, standing on a footstool, I would lead the orchestra as it played on our phonograph.
At age 11, I began singing as a soprano in the men and boys choir at Grace Episcopal Church in my hometown, Elmira, NY. We boys received excellent voice training from our organist and choirmaster, William H. Morvan. I was soloist for almost two years. In my final solo at age 14, when the church service was broadcast on WENY, the local radio station, I had to reach a high “A.” Because my voice was changing, I was very nervous, but I nailed that note solidly, with great relief!
I saw operas on TV when a child–Lucia, Don Giovanni and Boris plus Amahl and The Night Visitors. I still think that the ending of Don Giovanni for that audience was dramatically the best–the commandante walked the Don into the flames of hell and that was it! Since then, of course, the productions have included Mozart’s ending with the sextet (?) giving their thoughts and I always wish that the director would cut that out. After all, they don’t preserve every word of Shakespeare’s plays so why think that every note of Mozart is sacred?
I loved Amahl and distinctly remember wondering why Casper pronounces the candy he offers to Amahl as licoriss and not licorish as I heard at home. That first production was perfect; after seeing the taped color version shot on location and the first one again, I appreciated the spontaneity of that live performance. After all, it’s crucial to believe that the miracle happens in the blink of an eye.
As for affecting my musical tastes–a seed was planted for later I studied voice, became a music teacher and a Baltimore Opera and Symphony subscriber as well as a WBJC member and listener to the Saturday afternoon opera broadcasts.
In our April newsletter, 
we asked readers to write in about their earliest musical experience. Everyone at the station is thoroughly enjoying your stories!
We’ll be posting a few at a time over the next few weeks, so keep checking back.
I can’t remember when good music wasn’t there when I was growing up. My mother had taught music in local schools and soloed in churches. In the attic one day I came across my father’s old mandolin, guitar and banjo-mandolin, probably unplayed since college. We had an old upright Victrola (This is the 30s, of course) and my friends and I played whatever we could find in the cabinet, frequently “Death of Custer” by Arthur Pryor’s Band.
One experience I’ll always remember was hearing “Music for a Queen’s Taste” sponsored by the Thursday Morning Music Club (on Wednesdays) on WDBJ in Roanoke, VA. The theme was the waltz from “Serenade for Strings” by Tchaikovsky. I didn’t want that because I was looking for the “National Farm and Home Hour” that would play a march or two. This was during WWII. Now, I love that piece of music and think of that happy time (for me).
You could say that music has been in my life since before I was born. My mother had studied piano when she was young – she continued her studies when I was in college, and only recently stopped taking formal lessons a few years ago – but music was always very important to her. I was the third child born to my mother Cecilia. (Antonio, my older brother, went on to become a composer and theory teacher.)
When I was about 6 months or so, my mom noticed that I seemed to be humming or, to be literal, more like I was doing a combination of humming and la-la-ing. At first she thought she was hearing just the odd note, but one day she stayed to see if I would continue. Here I was at 6 months of age giving my mother a weird rendition of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy! I was a sucker for Ludwig even at that age, so is it no wonder that my favorite piece of music is Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto?
Thanks for the opportunity to tell you about my “first” time.
My earliest memory that led to a love of classical music is the 78 rpm records that my dad and grandfather had and that I remember listening to as a young child. I used to stand in front of my grandfathers radio console and conduct an imaginary orchestra. My dad and I used to play “Guess the Composer.” Another early memory was being allowed to have dinner with my family in the living room so we could watch Arturo Toscanini conduct the NBC Symphony live in black and white on television. Saturday nights, I believe. Another quantum leap for me in my musical development was working at the Cornell student run radio station, WVBR, as a student there in the early ’60’s. It got me out of the standard repertoire and I learned about composers like Vaughan Williams, and Hovhannes of whom I had never heard before. We used to have 24 hour classical music marathons during finals week.
Much of this time, I also played clarinet and oboe in school, and, after a 40 years lapse, took up the clarinet again about six years ago, studied with Ed Palanker before leaving Baltimore, and now play with the New Horizons Concert Band and a chamber group called Petite Arpeggio at UNCW. Some of us also play for the students’ conducting class. We have also enjoyed, as spectators, the Wilmington Symphony,Chamber Music Wilmington (I am on the artistic committee now) and the MetOpera HD broadcasts here, not to mention student recitals, so even though we miss the BSO, Wilmington has a lot to offer musically.
Probably more than you wanted to hear, but is has all been great fun, and the impact of those 78 rpm records did stick!