Performance Today®

Composer and guitarist Agustín Barrios was in a cathedral listening to heavenly music...then he walked out into the city and felt assaulted by the sudden change from serenity to noise. On today's show, hear the music he wrote in response to that experience: The Cathedral, by Agustín Barrios.

On today's show, we speak to scholar and soprano Dr. Louise Toppin, creator of the African Diaspora Music Project, a database of music written by Black composers from all around the world. Toppin's goal is to bring classical music written by Black people to concert halls worldwide.

Three members of the Schumann Quartet are siblings from a family named Schumann, and their father's name was Robert Schumann...but no relation to the famous composer. In this episode, we'll sort out the names and hear the Schumann Quartet play music by Schumann, plus Bruce Adolphe has this week’s Piano Puzzler.

Enrique Crespo was a supremely talented composer and trombonist. He was raised in Uruguay but spent most of his career in Germany writing great music for brass ensembles. We've got an example of Enrique Crespo's brassy creativity on this edition of Performance Today.

If a composer finishes a piece but chooses not to perform or publish it during their lifetime, should we honor that and never play or hear that piece? On today's show, we'll dig into that thought and hear some examples by Joaquin Rodrigo and Maurice Ravel.

In the Schumann Quartet, three members of the group are siblings from a family named Schumann, and their father's name was Robert Schumann...but, no relation to the famous composer. We'll sort out the names and hear the Schumann Quartet play music by Schumann on this episode of Performance Today.

Duke Ellington was already a jazz legend when he introduced a new symphonic suite at Carnegie Hall in 1943. On today's episode, hear the Black, Brown, and Beige Suite, by Duke Ellington, from a recent concert in Turin, Italy.

Join us for more music from violinist Randall Goosby, one of our recent PT Young Artists in Residence. On today’s show, Randall Goosby and pianist Zhu Wang play a sonata by Richard Strauss at an idyllic venue, a converted dairy barn in New York’s Western Catskills.

At the age of 26, American composer George Walker wrote Lyric for Strings in memory of his dear grandmother. George Walker lived a long and productive life as a composer, but that composition is his most frequently played piece. On today’s show, hear Lyric for Strings by George Walker, from a performance by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor JoAnn Falletta.