Performance Today®

When composer Joan Tower was a young girl, her father was a mining engineer. The family moved from New York to Bolivia for his work. On this episode of Performance Today, find out how young Joan spent her time while her father was in the mines, then we'll hear her piece called Copperwave.

Gioacchino Rossini wrote an unusual string duet in 1824, which was played ONCE...and then disappeared for a century and a half. It's a duet for cello and double bass, and it's now back in circulation. On today's show, hear Joel Dallow and Karl Fenner of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra play Rossini's unusual duet.

Composer Marc Mellits was inspired by trees when he wrote a piece called Splinters. Each movement, each "splinter" as he calls it, is based on a different kind of tree. On Today's show, we'll hear from Mellits's musical forest, played by the Akropolis Reed Quintet at a concert in San Antonio, Texas.

At the age of 27, Franz Schubert was facing his own mortality. He took a haunting song that he had written seven years earlier and wrote a set of variations for string quartet. On today's show, hear the Ariel Quartet play Schubert's String Quartet No. 14, better known by its nickname: Death and the Maiden.

Sisters Katia and Marielle Labeque have been playing as a piano duo for more than 50 years, and their playing and approach is as fresh as ever. On today's show, hear the Labeque sisters perform a new concerto for two pianos by Bryce Dessner.

On today's show, hear Stephen Prutsman play Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. Near the end of the performance, he does something that Liszt did as well...Prutsman works three other works into an improvised finale based on requests from the audience.

Composer Terry Riley was profoundly moved by something author Alice Walker said shortly after 9/11. She said, "We must learn to be kind to one another now." That statement is still true...and it always will be. On today's show, hear pianist Sarah Cahill perform Be Kind to One Another, by Terry Riley, from a concert in Interlochen, Michigan.

Thursday

Joel Revzen is one of our heroes. He was Artistic Director and Conductor of Classical Tahoe until his death in May of 2020, due to complications of COVID-19. Revzen's wife, Cindy Rhys, recalls, "He had the heart of an adventurer...with boundless generosity, ready to take anyone on that adventure with him. He made music from the heart, and he led from the heart." On today's show, hear Joel Revzen lead from the heart, conducting the Classical Tahoe Orchestra in the last two movements Brahm's Symphony No. 1.