Though it’s brought music to the ears of local listeners since 1987, the national syndication of WSHU’s Sunday Baroque, hosted by Suzanne Bona, turned 25 this year. To celebrate a quarter century of classical music and the tales behind the tunes, the Sylvan Trio — Suzanne playing the flute, Josh Aerie playing the cello and Greg Kostraba playing the piano — will perform in Stony Brook and Wilton on Friday and Sunday, respectively.
WSHU sat down with Suzanne to learn how the show and her playing have evolved over the years. A sneak-peak video of the trio’s concert shows them performing the Allegretto from Clara Schumann's "Piano Trio in G Minor, Op. 17" in the WSHU performance space.
WSHU: Suzanne, congratulations on 25 years of syndicated Sunday Baroque, and 37 years since the show started, yeah?
SB: Exactly. Yes.
WSHU: What about the show feels different now? Versus in the beginning, when you started?
SB: The very beginning…At the very beginning, 37 years ago, I was a complete novice in radio, and it was a local show. It was only an hour and a half on WSHU, and it was called Sunday Morning Baroque. It is interesting. So it's grown, of course, now to a four-hour, it's four hours a week of original programming. So that's one way it's changed. The syndication has changed. We're on about 279 stations now across the country… and how has the program changed?
Well, there have been a lot of changes. You know, we've had, in those years, so many more wonderful top-notch recordings of top-tier performers making Baroque music, both modern instruments and period instruments, and a different level of commitment by recording companies. Nowadays, more artists are recording these and seeking out music that isn't just Bach and Vivaldi and Handel anymore. So those are some of the big tent poles that have happened over these 37 years.
WSHU: In celebration of this milestone, right, you're doing a couple of performances with your group, the Sylvan Trio, and you play the flute.
SB: I do.
WSHU: You have since you were eight years old. So, how has your passion for performance evolved throughout your life? The way that you play?
SB: I knew very early on that music would be an important part of my life. And initially, I thought I was going to be an orchestral player. And then I sort of found my way to chamber music when I was probably in my early twenties. And then that was also right around when I started in radio. And so I realized at that point that radio was really the main thrust of my sharing music with other people. But I've always continued to play along the way. And so to see it kind of meld now with the music performance supporting the radio program and the radio program facilitating opportunities to play music… That's one of the biggies, that's one of the big ways that it has evolved. And I have evolved in terms of just the gigs that I play and the places that I play.
WSHU: So then, going forward in your own performance work, and then also, your job with Sunday Baroque. What does the future hold for the genre? What does the future look like for chamber music?
SB: Oh, I think, actually, for in-person performances, I think there's a great future because people love music. Music is humanity. You know, I think for my own personal tastes and for my own professional opinion in radio, I think that we probably should stop being so hung up on the genres. We talk about classical music and, you know, baroque is a subcategory of the classical canon and whatnot. And I guess I just feel like music is a little bit more fluid than that.
There's a phrase that I love. It's sort of one of my mantras, which is, “The more you love music, the more music you love.” And I guess I just don't think that it's inappropriate to have genres, but I think we are maybe a little too focused on that. So I see live music, performances, and chamber music, you know, going on forever because people love to make music together, and it is such a mark of humanity.
