The Library of Congress Music Division, WETA-FM and CD Syndications have launched a 13-week classical music radio series slated for broadcast nationwide. Bill McGlaughlin, creator and host of the Peabody Award-winning program “Saint Paul Sunday Morning,” hosts “Concerts from the Library of Congress,” which features excerpts from past performances held in the Library’s historic Coolidge Auditorium.
The series, which began on Nov. 5 on WETA 90.9 FM, has featured artists such as Joshua Bell, András Schiff, the Beaux Arts Trio, Stephen Isserlis, the Borromeo Quartet, Barry Douglas and Camerata Ireland, Luciana Souza and the Venice Baroque Orchestra with Giuliano Carmignola.
The new series marks a return to the Library’s distinguished broadcasting tradition of more than eight decades. Concerts of the 1925 Coolidge Auditorium season were broadcast by the Naval Broadcasting Service. In 1930, the five-year-old National Broadcasting Company began trial broadcasts for the Library from its studios in New York. With the 1933 season, Library concerts were aired regularly over the NBC and CBS networks, drawing a national audience for chamber music and beginning a remarkable run of weekly broadcasts that would last more than 60 years. “Concerts from the Library of Congress” aired internationally during the 1990s, with syndication by Radio France, Radio Netherlands, Italy’s RAI Tre and national networks in Australia, New Zealand and Russia.
Listeners will also have the chance to visit the treasure vaults of the Library’s Music Division in a special online series of companion packages for each program. Original manuscripts and sketches by J.S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Copland, Gershwin and many others, as well as letters, photographs and memorabilia, are accessible on the Library’s Web site at www.loc.gov/radioconcerts/.
Offering unique documents and artifacts, such as Paganini’s private pocket diary and a handwritten 1765 account of an eyewitness interview with a 9-year-old Mozart, Library curators capture a glimpse of the Music Division’s vast collections. With millions of individual items, it is the world’s largest music archive. Audio and video excerpts of the concerts will be included, as well as podcasts for selected programs from the Library’s site at www.loc.gov/podcasts/.
The executive producer of the radio series is Dan DeVany, vice president and general manager at WETA-FM. Producers are Vic Muentzer and Noelle Morris from CD Syndications and Anne McLean from the Library of Congress.
