This afternoon on The Classical Network, you’ll have a chance to affirm your lofty love for Loeffler.

What’s that? At best, you dimly recollect his music?

Charles Martin Loeffler was born on this date in 1861; he died in 1935. Though he long claimed to be of Alsation birth, in actuality he was born outside Berlin. The composer turned against Germany after his father died in prison, where he had been sent for his subversive writings, when Loeffler was only 12 years-old.

Loeffler was a fastidious artist, who cut his teeth in Berlin and Paris, and indeed he is frequently identified as French-American. He settled in Boston in 1881, where he shared the first desk with the concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and became an important figure in the city’s musical life. A man of wide culture and refined taste, he founded the Boston Opera Company. In 1887, he left the Symphony to devote himself wholly to composition.

I hope you’ll join me for Loeffler’s symphonic poem of 1906, titled “A Pagan Poem.” The work is inspired by the eighth Eclogue of Virgil, in which a maiden of Thessaly, abandoned by her lover, revives his ardor through the use of sorcery.

The work was first performed by the Boston Symphony, under Karl Muck. It was later championed by Leopold Stokowski, who recorded it for EMI. The piano plays such a prominent role, the piece sounds at times as if it may be a piano concerto. We’ll hear pianist Robert Hunter, and also English hornist William Kosinski.

You can enjoy it today, between 4 & 7:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network or at wwfm.org.

PHOTO: Loeffler (left) and Stokowski – who’s the true pagan here?