Fran Magazine: Issue #4

Classical Music Hour returns

Blast from the past

Years ago, like, “Aaron Sorkin can write a good movie” years ago, I wrote a classical music column for The Awl (rip!) with the hopes of expanding the modern audience of classical music. This column moved to WQXR for a while, and then it unceremoniously ended partially because I was too busy for school and partially because I was having a moment with Taylor Swift’s Lover and couldn’t bring myself to listen to classical radio. It happens to the best of us!

I got back into listening to classical music sometime around the spring of last year, , consuming a steady diet of WQXR (New York, of course), as well as WMFT (Chicago) and C24 (Boise). These days I prefer listening to classical radio over in lieu of classical albums because they allow for variation without having to, say, hit the shuffle button on an album. (Fran Magazine is vehemently “anti-shuffle” on any music compilation that isn’t a playlist, and even then, it’s iffy.) Classical programmers, however, know a lot more than I do, and I find on any given morning of listening to classical radio I’ll hear one or two pieces I know and love, and several I’ve never heard before in my life.