Performance Today®

Fred Child hosts Performance Today from New York City, the global capital of classical music. These days he's listening carefully to the soundscape of the city itself to better understand the place he calls home. We explore New York Out Loud on this episode of Performance Today.

When Emily Pinkerton plays a particular Civil War tune on the banjo, she says it's hard to stop; the melody bubbles and flows like a rippling river. On this episode of Performance Today, we'll hear a movement from "Rounder Songs" by Emily Pinkerton, featuring a lush arrangement for banjo and chamber ensemble.

Recently, Elizabeth Weinfield and her friends in the early music group Sonnambula stumbled across music by a long-forgotten composer. The works were written in the mid 1600s by a Flemish woman named Leonora Duarte. On this episode of Performance Today, hear Sonnambula perform 6 of Leonora Duarte's short Sinfonias.

As part of our special week-long series, New York Out Loud, PT host Fred Child heads underground to explore the history and importance of Subway music to the city.

Szymon Laks was a prisoner at Auschwitz, and leader of the prison orchestra. He says music did not offer comfort or peace, that music became a kind of torture, but he played on because his very life depended on it. The story and the music of Szymon Laks, on this edition of Performance Today.

When Emily Pinkerton plays a particular Civil War tune on the banjo, she says it's hard to stop; the melody bubbles and flows like a rippling river. On this episode of Performance Today, we'll hear a movement from "Rounder Songs" by Emily Pinkerton, featuring a lush arrangement for banjo and chamber ensemble.

It's a bit chilling, but in the last piece that Sergei Rachmaninoff wrote, he quotes the Dies Irae ("Day of Wrath") from the ancient Mass for the Dead. Join us for the story behind the music, and hear Rachmaninoff's astonishing final work, on this edition of Performance Today.

Death himself saunters into a graveyard at midnight and plays his fiddle. The clattering bones of dancing skeletons accompany his diabolical tune until the morning rooster scares them all away. On today's show, we'll hear a supernatural take on the Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saens.

On this weekend's Performance Today, we'll hear Anastasia Kobekina play Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations - a theme with a set of elegant and virtuosic variations for cello and orchestra. Plus, Bruce Adolphe joins us for this week's Piano Puzzler.