Five O’Clock Favorite
Every weekday at 5:00 PM PT
Every weekday at 5:00 PM PT, All Classical Radio and host Christa Wessel invite listeners to be part of the programming. During the Five O’Clock Favorite, you’ll hear a listener-suggested piece of music along with a personal story about their choice. With pieces that are fun and familiar, music for remembrance and reflection, and everything in between, the Five O’Clock Favorite is a perfect way to ease your commute, end your workday, or start off your evening soundtrack on All Classical Radio.
Your Host
Christa Wessel
Weekdays at 5:00, you’ll find me in my happy place on the radio: sharing your Five O’Clock Favorite. This special program is an opportunity for me to celebrate listeners’ memories and favorite pieces of classical music. Our stories connect us to each other, and this daily segment allows us to hear what’s in the hearts of our friends and neighbors. I hope you’ll submit your suggestion for a future Five O’Clock Favorite!
Submit your favorite piece:
Suggestions are easiest to honor if they’re 20 minutes or less.
This selection is connected for me with a momentous (and somber) historical event and my experience of it.
It was late November 1963, and I was a college student spending my junior year abroad in Vienna. Being an avid fan of opera, very much including the works of Richard Wagner, I went to performances of the Vienna State Opera whenever I could. On this particular night, I was at a performance of Die Walküre. In the final scene of the (long) opera, as a punishment for disobeying his command, Wotan puts his beloved daughter, the Valkyrie Brünnhilde, into a deep sleep and places her on a mossy bank. He summons Loge, the god of fire, pointing his spear toward a large rock. He strikes the rock three times with his spear, and flames spring from the rock, fire gradually spreading around the bank with the sleeping Brünnhilde. Wotan proclaims that no one who fears the point of his spear shall ever pass through the fire. As the familiar Magic Fire Music plays, Wotan takes one fond last look at the sleeping Valkyrie and disappears into the fire as the music continues to its conclusion, ending the opera.
On this night, as the last note of the Magic Fire Music ended, before there was any chance for applause, a suited official stepped quickly from behind the curtain and motioned for silence. "It is with great sadness that I must inform you," he said (or words to that effect), "that John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, is dead."
In shock, the audience dispersed in silence. Outside the theatre, the newsboys selling any of Vienna's three newspapers were swamped. I bought a copy of one of the papers and in a new shock--and now disbelief--read the headline: "Kennedy Dead. Fell victim of an assassination." Assassination?!!!
I hurried home to my "digs" and tuned my radio to the Voice of America, which of course was covering nothing else. I didn't know any other Americans in Vienna, but I sure wished I did right then. The closest I came was to go to the American embassy, where I arrived around midnight and signed a condolence book, behind which stood a U.S. marine in full-dress uniform.