Performance Today®

The members of an ensemble called A Far Cry are strong believers in musical democracy. They rotate leadership roles among all of the players; those personalities make their concerts refreshing and unexpected and vibrant. On today's show, hear A Far Cry play music by Philip Glass, from a concert in Rockport, Massachusetts.

When Claude Debussy wrote music for the ballet "Jeux," he was picturing a game of tennis between two women and one young man. In tennis, "love" means nothing; in Debussy's music, love is everything. On today's episode, we'll hear romance and seduction on the courts, from a concert by the New York Philharmonic.

Hungarian composer Bela Bartok was one of the founders of the field of ethnomusicology. He traveled the dusty back roads of Hungary and Romania, recording tens of thousands of folk songs, and that work inspired many of his own compositions. On today's episode, join us for Bartok's Hungarian Folk Tunes, from a concert at the Music@Menlo festival.

From ev'ry mountainside, Let freedom ring! On Memorial Day, we remember the people who've made the ultimate sacrifice while serving in the American Armed Forces. Today, we honor those who preserve our freedom with music.

Public graduation ceremonies are almost universally cancelled this year, so we're throwing a radio party with music to celebrate this rite of passage, and some special messages for this year's graduates. On this episode of Performance Today, we're honoring the graduating class of 2020. Plus, Bruce Adolphe has this week's Piano Puzzler.

When Antonio Pompa-Baldi was four years old, his mother signed him up for piano lessons, but the teacher told Antonio he was too young. Antonio burst into tears, and then went on to prove himself. Now 40 years later, he has made a lively career for himself as a pianist. On today's show, we'll hear from a recent concert Antonio Pompa-Baldi gave during the Southeastern Piano Festival, in Columbia, South Carolina.

Public graduation ceremonies are almost universally cancelled this year, so we're throwing a radio party with music to celebrate this rite of passage, and some special messages for this year's graduates. On this episode of Performance Today, we're honoring the graduating class of 2020.

Composer Viet Cuong was inspired by renewable energy when he wrote Re(new)al, a concerto for percussion quartet. Each movement is based on a different source of power: water, wind, and solar. On this episode of Performance Today, it's music celebrating renewable energy, and everything that's possible when we work together.

Her name was Dulcinea, and she is the inspiration in one of the great stories of all time: Don Quixote by Cervantes. Dulcinea doesn't even appear in the novel, but just the idea of her fuels everything that Don Quixote does. On this episode of Performance Today, tune in for "Don Quixote y Dulcinea" by Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ranki.