Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado says it all: “The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra la, breathe promise of merry sunshine.” There is something about April that rejuvenates classical radio programmers. Warmer temperatures are happening, flowers and trees are coming back to life, and the dark and grey days of winter are giving way to longer days and fluffy clouds against blue skies. Time for appropriate music!

We start dusting off Schumann’s “Spring” Symphony, Beethoven’s “Spring” Sonata, and Spring from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. We salute the change of seasons with Frank Bridge’s Enter Spring and keep on going with the Spring Music of Joseph Marx. We rattle the rafters with Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and dance in the mountains with Copland’s Appalachian Spring.

We put a few musical flowers in the picture as well, be it Strauss’s Roses from the South, Wilhelm Peterson-Berger’s Flowers of Froso, or Benjamin Britten’s Five Flower Songs. We salute the coming of more light with Sir Arnold Bax’s Dance in the Sunlight and the Hymn to the Sun from Rimsky-Korsakov.

April is also the month when the Virginia Arts Festival is back in full swing. We’ll have interviews and music and even some of your favorite announcers appearing as part of festival events. Stay with WHRO FM all throughout April, revel in the season, and maybe grow a flower or two—remembering that, like people, plants thrive on the music as well!

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