Many wonderful music programs come out of radio station WPRB-FM of Princeton, New Jersey. Marvin Rosen’s program Classical Discoveries ranks high among these offerings. He’s been celebrating new music and living composers over the airwaves since 1997, and on May 29 will note the show’s 20th birthday.
“Classical Discoveries would not be possible anywhere else but here on WPRB,” Rosen proudly states on his web site. “The station does not have a ‘black list’ of forbidden works, and no one is afraid that some music director at the top of the corporate ladder with one strike of a pen will remove 99% of a proposed playlist and replace it with old warhorses and pretty music.”
This is really a great thing, and so is all the wonderful audio and written content that Rosen generously posts: recordings of his piano performances, his radio shows, his playlists, his lectures, his championing of the music of Alan Hovhaness and other post-World War II composers. I’ve been a fan of Classical Discoveries for a long time.
Rosen traces his roots to the great classical music Renaissance that took place in New York City in the 1960s, inspired by the conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein (“there will never be anyone like him again,” he writes) and WQXR-FM.
“As you know, I am a happy community DJ who would rather do this as a volunteer and not be paid, than told what I can or can’t do on other stations,” Marvin wrote to me several weeks ago. I am looking forward to hearing how he celebrates his 20th year as a great classical radio deejay.
