BPR is pleased to share the schedule for upcoming broadcasts of the Asheville Symphony Orchestra's Masterworks series on BPR Classic.
Find your BPR Classic frequency to listen on the radio. You can also stream on this website or from the BPR app. See the full schedule below.
Masterworks 7: Unbroken
This concert opens with RAINN, a newly commissioned work by Karena Ingram, whose music is celebrated for its vivid textures. Mozart’s 23rd piano concerto follows, balancing sophistication with elegance. Finally, Shostakovich’s striking 10th emerges from darkness into light; searing drama gives way to triumphant resolution as Shostakovich makes a powerful declaration of personal and artistic resilience.
Listen on BPR Classic: September 22 at 7 p.m. and September 24 at 9 a.m.
Masterworks 1: Fellowship
Brahms crafted his exuberant First Piano Concerto through years of collaboration with close friends and mentors, including Clara Schumann who inspired the concerto’s dreamy second movement. Beethoven’s relentless Seventh Symphony — a personal favorite of his with its unyielding rhythmic drive — premiered at a charity concert performed by an orchestra of friends and fellow composers. Both works emerged from profound creative kinship and community, proof that greatness rarely stands alone.
Listen on BPR Classic: October 13 at 7 p.m. and October 15 at 9 a.m.
Masterworks 2: Nightfall
Anna Clyne’s stormy nocturne The Midnight Hour gathers “every shred of the luminous past” like “a naked woman running mad through the pure night.” Tan Dun’s spiritually cinematic Wolf Totem summons the mythical Mongolian wolf from the grasslands. Sibelius’s devastating Fifth conjures the inscrutable patterns of the aurora. Three works that find beauty in loss, solace in vast spaces, and mystery in the gathering dark.
Listen on BPR Classic: November 10 at 7 p.m. and November 12 at 9 a.m.
Masterworks 3: Double Take
Some moments demand a double take, and this program explores such impossible and intoxicating pairings. Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet Suite conjures Shakespeare’s star-crossed tragedy in all its beauty and brutality. Grandson Gabriel Prokofiev offers his own unlikely pairing with the first-ever concerto for Asheville’s own Minimoog, where acid house collides with the classical and shattering convention becomes a family tradition.
Listen on BPR Classic: February 16, 2027, at 7 p.m. and February 18, 2027, at 9 a.m.
Masterworks 4: London
This program honors the British talent for holding gravity and levity in the same hand. Britten’s Simple Symphony opens with melodies from his childhood, reimagined years later. Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 follows with biting intensity — lyrical, ruthless, and unapologetically demanding. Pärt’s Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten offers an austere meditation on loss, inspired by the “unusual purity” of Britten’s music. Haydn closes with his final symphony, composed in London, ending not in sentiment, but in triumphant joy.
Listen on BPR Classic: March 16, 2027, at 7 p.m. and March 18, 2027, at 9 a.m.
Masterworks 5: Dedication
As First Baptist Church of Asheville marks its 100th anniversary, we celebrate with a program worthy of the occasion: Respighi’s Gli Uccelli (written the year the church was dedicated), Glière’s soaring horn concerto, and Saint-Saëns’s masterpiece on the sanctuary organ.
Listen on BPR Classic: April 13, 2027, at 7 p.m. and April 15, 2027, at 9 a.m.
Masterworks 6: Marquee
New York, New York! Gershwin’s Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra swings between Charleston rhythm and back-alley blues, while Leonard Bernstein’s On the Town embodies subway rush, park-bench hush, and Times Square buzz. Gypsy lifts the curtain, and Porgy & Bess — a defining American work rooted in Black musical tradition — brings the program home, showcasing Broadway in its prime: glamour and grit, lights blazing, and the city wide awake.
Listen on BPR Classic: May 18, 2027, at 7 p.m. and May 20, 2027, at 9 a.m.
The Asheville Symphony’s Masterworks Series performances on BPR Classic are made possible with the generous support of Roberts & Stevens and Mercy Urgent Care.
