# Music on the radio that startles you



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

One of the fun things about listening to the radio is that you can sometimes (if rarely) be surprised. Tonight it was playing a classical-sounding overture, but it seemed somehow awkward. My ears perked up but I couldn't place it at all.

Turns out it was Reicha's _Overture in D_, oddly written in 5/8 time. Reicha wrote the earliest piece I could find (looking some time ago) in quintuple time, one of the fugues from his _36 Fugues for Piano_ written in 1803. I couldn't find when this overture was written, but it may have been about the same time. It's on YouTube: 



 .

How about you? Ever been surprised or startled by something on the radio?


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

A couple of times when my very conservative classical station played Varese, and Takemitsu. But I'm most startled when I start my car and hear some modern music thinking it's the radio and then realizing I left one of my CDs in the player!


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Andrew Porter once wrote that in England, the game where you try to name a random unknown piece, was called (when he was a student) Dittersdorf, because most often when a piece sounded almost like Haydn but not quite, it was by Dittersdorf. I didn't pay it much attention until one day they were playing an almost-but-not-quite-Haydn piece on the radio and I had to wait in the driveway until it ended to find out that, indeed, it was by Dittersdorf!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

For fun, check out where that "von Dittersdorf" came from. He wasn't born that way!


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## Olias (Nov 18, 2010)

When a radio station plays the entire Beethoven Violin Concerto instead of just the last movement I almost swerve off the road in shock.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

starthrower said:


> A couple of times when my very conservative classical station played Varese, and Takemitsu.


I remember doing a speed search on the radio and landing on Varese's Octandre. I was so surprised to hear Varese on the radio that when I stopped, I called the radio station. It was a college station, and this bright young student was trying to start a program that wasn't filled with obscure trio sonatas (in Nashville, the classical stations seemed at that time to be obsessed with that kind of thing). She even asked me if I had a request. I diligently listened to her program for two weeks. Then it mysteriously vanished. And then it was back to the trio sonatas.

Another time I was driving with my family and again, speed searching, and I landed on the part of Bantock's Celtic Symphony where the harps go crazy. My 11-year-old daughter was so impressed that we bought the recording the next day, and it was there on her shelf next to Sara McLaughlan and Jewel.

We used to have a program called Classics by Request, where you could call in at 8:30, and they would play your requests, any requests (I requested Satie's Socrate, and they played the entire third movement), at 9. One time I requested Poulenc's Movements Perpetuels. Afterwards, the radio host said that piece lit up the lines with people asking what it was. It turns out it was the theme to a popular Christian kids' show. I'd like to think at least for one shining moment I introduced Poulenc to the general public.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Only last week I was driving home and turned on the radio when I heard a work unknown to me but one that amazed me with its beauty and inventiveness. I decided to pull over to listen and at the end the announcer said “that was ‘Graal theatre’, a work for violin and orchestra by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, played by the Curtis 20/21 Ensemble with Jennifer Koh, violin.” The last time I remember that happening to me was about 20 years ago when I first heard Sibelius’ ‘Rakastava’ on the radio while on the road.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

I'm startled just to _hear_ classical music on the radio!
My Jeep currently has a subscription to Sirius XM and there is one "Classical" station for every 300 "three chord and less music" stations. Which is like one classical station. There is an opera station. So I guess that's like two stations. 
But the regular FM and AM dials are nearly devoid of any sort of classical music in many parts of the country. And what stations do exist are seemingly hanging on by a thread. Which is why I still value having a CD deck in the vehicle.
At home I can pick up one 24 hour classical station, a public radio station to which I donate. Comparatively, there are dozens of country music and religious stations, and dozens more of pop and rock. Very little jazz. Very very little classical. So I continue to value my disc collection.
I have recently been looking in at Spotify. Maybe there is a chance.
So, that's what startles me.


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