The English composer Edward Elgar had romance and reciprocity on his mind when he composed what was to become one of his best-known works in 1888. His former student, the accomplished writer and amateur pianist Caroline Alice Roberts, had given him a poem, which he set to music. He then gave her Salut d’Amour as an engagement present, with a dedication in French: à Carice, “Carice” being a portmanteau of her first and middle names.
The Elgars’ musical courtship is one of many stories worth lingering on as we celebrate Valentine’s Day. It will naturally provide a tender moment in WRTI’s classical broadcast on Friday — when Melinda Whiting presents our Morning Meditation just after 11 a.m., playing a version of the piece recorded by Swedish violinist Daniel Lozakovich for his 2023 album Spirits, with Russian pianist Stanislav Soloviev. (We won’t hold it against anyone who misses it for the Eagles Super Bowl parade, which also begins at 11.)
Love, in all of its dimensions, will be a natural through line in our on-air programming all day Friday, and through the night. Even the Sousalarm carries this theme: tune in bright and early at 7:15 a.m. to hear John Philip Sousa’s “Our Flirtation,” which was originally heard as incidental music for a musical comedy first produced in Philadelphia in 1880; host John T.K. Scherch will play a version recorded by the United States Marine Band.
A little later, for Breakfast with Bach just after 8 a.m., Scherch will play the Philadelphians with Eugene Ormandy performing the “Little Suite” from J.S. Bach’s Anna Magdalena Notebook, which he composed for his second wife, the professional singer Anna Magdalena Wilcke.
Any classical music fan knows to expect an appearance of Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet on Valentine’s Day. On WRTI, you’ll hear a section known as “Romeo and Juliet Before Parting,” as performed by Mariss Jansons with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. The same lovelorn Shakespearean tragedy inspired Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to compose Romeo and Juliet; we’ll hear the iconic “Fantasy Overture” in a hometown version by Riccardo Muti with The Philadelphia Orchestra.
Among other songs of young love and pursuit, our classical broadcast will spotlight matrimony: Listen especially for the “Porgi amor” aria of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro, in a version featuring soprano Veronique Gens with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conducted by Ivor Bolton.
Opera fans will also delight in our 1 p.m. Midday Mozart section, the “Il mio tesoro” aria from Don Giovanni, featuring tenor Juan Diego Florez and the Orchestra La Scintilla, led by Riccardo Minasi; the Prelude and Liebestod of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, recorded by Jakub Hrusa with the Bamberg Symphony; and a pair of selections by Giacomo Puccini, “Storiella d’amore” (featuring clarinetist Sharon Kam with the Wurttemberg Chamber Orchestra, led by Ruben Gazarian) and the “Che gelida manina” aria from La bohème (with tenor Roberto Alagna and the London Symphony Orchestra, led by Richard Armstrong).
There is so much more, of course — including works by Rachmaninoff and Rimsky-Korsakov, Poulenc and Liszt. Also George Gershwin and one of his American Songbook successors, Victor Young. And you won’t want to miss Flix at Five, when Meg Bragle plays Ennio Morricone’s “Love Theme” from Cinema Paradiso, in a recording by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, led by Nikoloz Rachveli. The rest is best left to your discovery as a listener; as any good romantic will tell you, building anticipation is key. Happy Valentine’s Day!
