WKCR is pleased to present a joint birthday broadcast on Thursday, May 7th, for composers Johannes Brahms and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky on the 193rd and 186th respective anniversaries of their birth. The special broadcast will run for 24 hours and preempt all regularly-scheduled programming.
Johannes Brahms was born on May 7, 1833, in Hamburg, Germany, and is widely considered one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Born to a musical family, he began playing in concerts and composing early in his youth. His piano teacher, Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel, famously complained in 1842 that Brahms "could be such a good player, but he will not stop his never-ending composing." Indeed, Brahms’ oeuvre grew to include some of the most highly regarded chamber music in the repertoire, alongside four symphonies, four concertos, a Requiem, and hundreds of folk-song and Lieder arrangements. Collaborations with Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi integrated folk and dance music into Brahms’ compositions, like his popular Hungarian Dances. Meanwhile, a long artistic—and failed romantic—relationship with pianist and composer Clara Schumann also shaped his creative output. In the schism of Romantic musicians of the late 19th century, the so-called “War of the Romantics,” Brahms championed the conservative side with his lyrical, soft melodies. After achieving widespread critical success in his middle age, Brahms died of liver cancer on April 3, 1897 in Vienna.
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840 in Votkinsk, a small town in western Russia on the banks of the Kama River, and became one of the foremost Romantic Russian composers. Though he took piano lessons as a child, his genius was not immediately apparent and he followed his family’s wishes to become a civil servant. After three years as an assistant at the Ministry of Justice, he enrolled in the first class of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, an institution which became the foundation of his compositional combining of European and Russian classical traditions. Today, Tchaikovsky is renowned for his sweeping emotional melodies across compositions for orchestra, ballet, and opera. Along with revolutionizing the genre of ballet through Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, Tchaikovsky’s oeuvre includes seven finished symphonies, ten operas, and four concertos. Nine days after conducting the premiere of his Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique, in Saint Petersburg, Tchaikovsky died, aged 53, for still-disputed reasons.
In classic WKCR fashion as “the alternative,” we will present the works of Brahms and Tchaikovsky alongside each other for all 24 hours of the broadcast. The pair met at fellow composer Tchaikovsky Brodsky’s Christmas dinner in 1887, in Leipzig, Germany. Though they respected each other as men, neither enjoyed the other’s compositions: Brahms famously told Tchaikovsky he disliked the finale of his Symphony No. 5, whereas in his tour diary, Tchaikovsky wrote, “I never could, and never can, admire [Brahms’] music.” Thus, though they were contemporaries, their widely diverging style will provide listeners with a profound exploration of the Romantic era.
It is our honor to participate in the celebration of Brahms and Tchaikovsky. Listeners can tune into the birthday broadcast on 89.9FM or stream it live on our website, wkcr.org. Follow WKCR on Instagram (@wkcr) and Twitter (@WKCRFM) for updates about this special broadcast and future events.
