Arturo Toscanini lauded hers as “a voice that comes once in a hundred years.”

Join me as we celebrate the Lady from Philadelphia, Marian Anderson, on her birthday, with a 1939 recording of Brahms’ “Alto Rhapsody,” featuring the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy.

1939 was the same year, you’ll recall, as her ultimate demonstration of turning lemons into lemonade: when Anderson was barred from performing at Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution, on account of her race, she sang instead from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial – to 750,000 people on the mall and a national radio audience estimated in the millions.

Anderson’s Brahms performance will be just one of the highlights of a birthday-heavy afternoon, which will also include music and/or performances by Louis Coerne, Mirella Freni, Viktor Kalabis, Gidon Kremer, Morten Lauridsen, Lotte Lehmann, Sir Hubert Parry, and Wilhelm Peterson-Berger.

Your presence will be your present, from 4 to 6 p.m. EST. Then stick around for a party favor in the form of Max Reger and Mendelssohn, on “Music from Marlboro,” following at 6, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.