wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

The 20th-century Hungarian composer Leo Weiner's music more 19th-century in style, but his outstanding talent won him much acclaim among his contemporaries; the Pastorale, phantasie et fugue demonstrates why. Beethoven played his First Piano Concerto for five years before he declared it ready for publication; all that work paid off, as we can hear in tonight’s original-instruments performance by Melvyn Tan on fortepiano, with Roger Norrington’s London Classical Players.

Charles Ives died fifty years ago (5/19/54), but his quirky talent fascinates us still. Lincoln Center is presenting an Ives festival from May 11–29, and you’ll hear a lot of his music on WNYC as well. Tonight, Symphony No. 3 performed by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, plus the proverbial “more.” Nicholas McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra play a suite from Jean-Philippe Rameau’s ridiculously funny “Platee,” which his bitter enemy Jean-Jacques Rousseau declared “the most excellent piece of music that has yet been heard upon our stage.” Rousseau was right!