Performance Today®

Those of us who knew Leonard Bernstein through his recordings loved his work. But what did Bernstein's colleagues and fellow composers think about his career? Composer Philip Glass says that, in considering Bernstein's legacy, there is a lot that he did right. But there was one thing he thinks Bernstein could have done differently.

When conductor Marin Alsop was a kid, she talked her parents into buying two posters for her: one of the Beatles, and one of Leonard Bernstein. Marin Alsop's memories of Bernstein, on Thursday's Performance Today.

Leonard Bernstein was born a hundred years ago this summer. And beyond his own extraordinary career, Bernstein was an unparalleled mentor. On Wednesday's Performance Today, memories about music lessons and life lessons from Leonard Bernstein.

When he was a graduate student, Richard Danielpour knew Leonard Bernstein as a mentor, a provocateur and the center of a swirling mix of celebrities. Danielpour says Bernstein was quite funny, sometimes sardonic. But there was one person he would never make fun of.

Composer Aleksandra Vrebalov visited a bunch of taverns in preparation for one of her compositions. She wasn't looking for a liquid muse; she was seeking the sounds of Romanian folk music. On Tuesday's Performance Today, the Apollo Chamber Players perform "Pannonia Boundless" by Aleksandra Vrebalov.

Antonin Dvorak wrote his marvelous Bagatelles as a gift for a dear friend. He never meant them for public performance. Lucky for us, they escaped to the wider world. On Monday's Performance Today, we'll hear Dvorak's Bagatelles from a concert presented by the Seattle Chamber Music Society.

In the 1940s, Composer John Harbison grew up in a musical family in New Jersey. The Harbisons would gather around the piano and sing together. John Harbison had those memories in mind when he wrote a set of pieces called "Songs America Loves to Sing." We'll hear it from a concert in Athens, Georgia, on this weekend's Performance Today.

Dmitri Shostakovich hid some musical cryptograms in the 3rd movement of his Symphony No. 10, but it remained a secret until the 1990's. On Friday's Performance Today, hear Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10 and we'll decipher his code.

In 1868, Edvard Grieg traveled to the Norwegian countryside where he spent some of his down time writing what's become one of the most iconic piano concertos of all time. On Thursday's Performance Today, Pianist Javier Perianes plays Grieg's "Piano Concerto in A Minor" with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra.