Concerts from The Library of Congress
Beginning in April, the Library of Congress Music Division, WETA-FM and CD Syndications will be launching a 13-week classical music radio series to air nationwide. Bill McGlaughlin, hosts "Concerts from the Library of Congress," featuring performances held in the Library's historic Coolidge Auditorium.
Kicking off the series on April 1, 2008 on 100 stations around the country will be a terrific lineup of artists, including 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 created 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, will be accessible via 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 more than 22 million 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 http://www.loc.gov/radioconcerts/.
Executive producer for the radio series is Dan DeVany, vice president and general manager at WETA-FM. Producers are Vic Muentzer and Noel Morris from CD Syndications and Anne McLean from the Library of Congress The associate producer is Cydne Gillard.