I was just finishing up work yesterday when I turned on radio klassik Stephansdom and got something I didn’t think I needed. On a special broadcast to recognize the 50th anniversary of the death of Hans Swarowsky, the Vienna radio station presented a restored recording of the conductor’s St. Matthew’s Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach. I treasure my CD of John Eliot Gardner’s recording, but Swarowsky’s 1967 performance with the Wiener Symphoniker and the Wiener Akademie Kammerchor was absolutely stunning. You can listen to it yourself here. (For those of you whose German is a little rusty, just click on “Sendung nachhören.”)
radio klassik Stephansdom’s September Spendentag is coming up in just a few days and you’ll read more about it then, but the very fact that rkS will present a recording like this without commercial or other interruption — all three hours of it — is one of the many things that make rkS special. You needn’t wait until September 18 to donate, either. I wrote more about radio klassik Stephansdom here.