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

Dur­ing a vis­it to Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty last year, Bil­ly Joel field­ed a ques­tion from a fresh­man, Michel Pol­lack. To para­phrase: “My favorite song of yours is New York State of Mind. Can I play it for you on the piano while you sing?” To which Joel replied, “Ok.” And off they went. It’s a love­ly impromp­tu moment. But it was a lit­tle too much for Pol­lack. A lit­tle over­whelmed by the whole expe­ri­ence, he got a 69 on his cal­cu­lus exam the next day. But who could blame him. We have more impromp­tu musi­cal moments below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lenny Kravitz Over­hears High School Kids Play­ing His Music and Sur­pris­es Them by Join­ing In

A Paul Simon Feelin’-Very-Groovy Moment with a Fan

Blind Gui­tarist Lives Out Dream at U2 Show

In 1968, Pink Floyd’s rela­tion­ship with increas­ing­ly drug-addled lead singer/songwriter/guitarist Syd Bar­rett unrav­eled. Though Barrett’s depar­ture wasn’t offi­cial­ly announced until April, that band had already begun, by neces­si­ty, per­form­ing and record­ing with­out him late the pre­vi­ous year, adding gui­tarist David Gilmour to the line­up to sup­plant Syd’s errat­ic per­for­mances. In Feb­ru­ary of ’68 the band appeared minus Syd on a French live-music pro­gram called Baton Rouge. Six­ties music blog A Dandy in Aspic describes the show as cap­tur­ing dur­ing its year-long run “some of the best British Mod/Psych bands at their peak,” includ­ing The Small Faces, The Moody Blues, and the Yard­birds, with Jim­my Page.

This Floyd footage, how­ev­er, is espe­cial­ly sig­nif­i­cant for its por­trait of the band find­ing its way through the trau­ma of its chief architect’s men­tal demise, with a seem­ing­ly awk­ward Gilmour tak­ing over:  “It still sounds great, but the band are vis­i­bly uncom­fort­able. Roger Waters’ dark psy­che­del­ic gem ‘Set The Con­trols For the Heart Of The Sun’ sounds amaz­ing, and ‘Let there Be [More] Light’ is an indi­ca­tion of Pink Floy­d’s new, post-Syd direc­tion.”

In addi­tion to those two songs from their upcom­ing sec­ond album A Saucer­ful of Secrets, the band plays two songs from their debut, Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The weird mys­ti­cal chant “Astron­o­my Domine” doesn’t suf­fer at all, since key­boardist Richard Wright sang the lead vocals on the album ver­sion and does so again here. David Gilmour takes over the lead for Barrett’s “Flam­ing,” which is such a Syd song, with its dis­turb­ing and child­like lyrics and loopy vocal melody, that his absence becomes notice­able. But it comes off fine, if some­what stiff, and the song remained in their set for years after­ward.

For more clas­sic psy­che­del­ic per­for­mances from the 1967–68 Baton Rouge, head over to A Dandy in Aspic.

via Kurt Loder/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Psy­che­del­ic Scenes of Pink Floyd’s Ear­ly Days with Syd Bar­rett, 1967

Syd Bar­rett: Under Review, a Full Doc­u­men­tary About Pink Floyd’s Bril­liant and Trou­bled Founder

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Back in 2012, we fea­tured a 1975 Talk­ing Heads con­cert at CBGB, ref­er­enc­ing Gen­er­a­tion X author Dou­glas Cou­p­land’s telling def­i­n­i­tion of who, exact­ly, con­sti­tutes that cohort: “If you liked the Talk­ing Heads back in the day, then you’re prob­a­bly X.” Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly iron­ic and sin­cere, artis­tic and com­mer­cial, ram­shackle and pol­ished, cere­bral and impul­sive: the sen­si­bil­i­ties of David Byrne’s influ­en­tial new-wave band and the zeit­geist pro­file of Gen­er­a­tion X share too many qual­i­ties to list. 1975, for a Gen Xer, would cer­tain­ly count as “back in the day,” though per­haps a bit too far back in the day for many of them to have gained entrance to such a vibrant­ly scuzzy venue as CBGB. Just five years lat­er, though, many more of them would have come of just enough age to engage with the Heads, who by that point had blown up in pop­u­lar­i­ty, play­ing huge venues all over the world.

You may have seen the band play­ing Rome in 1980 when we post­ed that show in 2012, and today we give you anoth­er of their Euro­pean gigs from that same break­out year, in Dort­mund. That loca­tion, about 250 miles from Cou­p­land’s Cana­di­an Air Force base birth­place in Ger­many, in a Ger­many still divid­ed, brings to mind not just the impor­tance of themes of the late Cold War to the nov­el­ist’s work, but to Gen­er­a­tion X itself, the last kids to grow up under the cred­i­ble threat of sud­den nuclear anni­hi­la­tion. Such an uneasy psy­cho­log­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal envi­ron­ment would have an effect on the for­ma­tion of any­one’s cre­ative mind, as it must also have on that of Gen­er­a­tion X’s pre­de­ces­sors, the Baby Boomers — a group in which the 1952-born Byrne falls right in the mid­dle. The Cold War may have end­ed, but the Talk­ing Heads’ music, as you’ll expe­ri­ence in this Dort­mund con­cert, tran­scends both tem­po­ral and geo­graph­i­cal con­text.

Set list:

1. “Psy­cho Killer”
2. “Cities”
3. “Zim­bra”
4. “Once in a Life­time”
5. “Ani­mals”
6. “Crosseyed and Pain­less”
7. “Life Dur­ing Wartime”
8. “The Great Curve”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Live in Rome, 1980: The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.