Performance Today®

Danbi Um was ten years old when her mom took her to Philadelphia to play her violin for a few people. She didn't know that her casual performance was an audition for one of the top schools of music in the world. Violinist Danbi Um talks about her life-changing audition on this episode of Performance Today.

When American composer Emily Cooley was living in Philadelphia, she stumbled across an essay by Virginia Woolf. That essay inspired Cooley to write a piece of music, and she even borrowed the title. On this episode of Performance Today, hear Street Haunting by Emily Cooley, from a concert at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

Violinist and composer Fritz Kreisler wrote a concerto in 1927, but for about eight years, he claimed it had been written in the early 1700s, by Antonio Vivaldi. Why? On this episode of Performance Today, hear the story and the music: violinist Pekka Kuusisto leads the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in a live performance of Kreisler's Violin Concerto in C Major.

Conductor Andrew Manze recently led the LA Philharmonic in a symphony they hadn't played in decades, possibly due to work's technical difficulty. Find out which symphony is exhausting to play, and exhilarating to hear, on this episode of Performance Today.

There's a remarkable photo from the 1889 World Expo in Paris: Four young Javanese dancers, and one young woman is staring rather sternly into the camera. Her name is Soekia. On this episode of Performance Today, hear the the Dolce Suono Ensemble perform the world premiere of Soekia's Dance by Thomas Whitman.

The first symphony Johannes Brahms wrote took him nearly 20 years to complete. By contrast, Brahms wrote his second symphony in just a few weeks. On this episode of Performance today, hear the Buffalo Philharmonic play Brahms's Symphony No. 2, with JoAnn Falletta conducting.

Chee-Yun plays a violin that is three and a half centuries old, but it looks brand new, with hardly a mark on it. That's long been a curiosity, but now it seems this violin might have been buried and carefully preserved for two centuries. On this episode of Performance Today, hear about a violin with a strange connection to the underworld, and hear Chee-Yun play that violin at a concert in Steamboat Springs.

There's a remarkable photo from the 1889 World Expo in Paris: Four young Javanese dancers, and one young woman is staring rather sternly into the camera. Her name is Soekia. On this episode of Performance Today, hear the the Dolce Suono Ensemble perform the world premiere of Soekia's Dance by Thomas Whitman.

Composer Edvard Grieg found tremendous inspiration in Norwegian history and folklore. His Lyric Pieces for piano are expressions of his country's places, stories, and people. On this episode of Performance Today, Joyce Yang brings those colorful works to life, from a concert in Seattle.