The World Concert Hall: Listen To The Best Live Classical Music Concerts for Free

While the Inter­net may not have helped glob­al music sales, it’s cer­tain­ly been a boon for fans want­i­ng to lis­ten to oth­er­wise-inac­ces­si­ble music, espe­cial­ly clas­si­cal music. We often post clas­si­cal musi­cal finds on Open Cul­ture. Take for exam­ple this com­pendi­um of freely down­load­able music from over 150 clas­si­cal com­posers, this open ver­sion of Bach’s Gold­berg vari­a­tions and all of Bach’s organ works, and then this col­lec­tion of 85,000 free clas­si­cal scores. Today, we bring you anoth­er fan­tas­tic resource: the World Con­cert Hall.

Just over a cen­tu­ry after the first radio per­for­mance of Rug­gero Leoncavallo’s “Il Pagli­ac­ci,” and Pietro Mascagni’s “Cav­al­le­ria Rus­ti­cana” were broad­cast live from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera House in 1910, the World Con­cert Hall has made it its mis­sion to bring free live clas­si­cal con­certs to the world. The web­site con­tains a col­lec­tion of links to free radio per­for­mances each week, allow­ing lis­ten­ers to tune into live con­certs per­formed across the globe. You can browse per­for­mances accord­ing to the site’s sched­ule, or choose from a selec­tion of clas­si­cal radio sta­tions in a large num­ber of coun­tries. As you might expect, the U.S has the largest selec­tion by far, with 80 sta­tions. But for more curi­ous music lovers, World Con­cert Hall also offers a taste of what oth­er fans are lis­ten­ing to in oth­er coun­tries, like Chi­na, Japan, and Israel.

Inter­est­ed in check­ing out Mendelssohn’s con­cer­to for vio­lin, piano, and strings at Brus­sels’ Klara Fes­ti­val (today, 7pm, GMT) or Iri­na Ior­daches­cu and the Roman­ian Radio Nation­al Orches­tra per­form­ing Tchaikovsky’s last works (Fri­day, 5pm, GMT)? Lis­ten to your heart’s con­tent at World Con­cert Hall.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Visu­al­ized in a Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion for Its 100th Anniver­sary

Debussy Plays Debussy: The Great Composer’s Play­ing Returns to Life

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

New­ly Dis­cov­ered Piece by Mozart Per­formed on His Own Fortepi­ano