Performance Today®

In 1908, Igor Stravinsky wrote a piece called Fireworks, then proudly sent a copy to his mentor, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. But the package was returned unopened, with a shocking note attached. On Friday's Performance Today, the Oregon Symphony plays the music that was returned to it's sender: Fireworks, by Igor Stravinsky.

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. On Thursday's Performance Today, the story and the music of Szymon Laks.

Benjamin Grosvenor is just 25 years old, but he's already a veteran of concert halls around the world, and is one of the most insightful pianists of his generation. On Wednesday's Performance Today, we'll take you to hear Grosvenor give a majestic performance of music by J. S. Bach, from a concert in Rockport, Massachusetts.

It's a musician's nightmare: arriving for a concert only to find a prize instrument... broken. Guitarist Matthew Greif had it happen twice in one tour! On Tuesday's Performance Today, the story of back-to-back broken guitars, and we'll hear the LA Guitar Quartet from a concert in New York City.

Join us on New Year's Day for concert highlights that you can't hear anywhere else. On Monday's Performance Today, we head to Houston to hear Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2, then drop in on a touching performance by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.

Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Symphony No. 5 at a time when when honest words could be mortally dangerous. On this weekend's Performance Today, learn more about Shostakovich's fifth symphony, then hear it performed by the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, from a concert in Birmingham, England.

Trolls, goblins, and gnomes. On Friday's Performance Today, we'll join them all in the Hall of the Mountain King, when we hear Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite performed at the Artosphere Festival. Then, we'll head to New York to hear two special pieces: one old, one new...but both blue.

Aaron Copland was from Brooklyn. He was a city slicker who, to a certain degree, created what we think of as the sound of the old American West. On Thursday's Performance Today, we'll hear selections from his cowboy ballet "Billy the Kid."

Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Symphony No. 5 at a time when when honest words could be mortally dangerous. The symphony helped people in the USSR feel and experience what they were not allowed to say. On Wednesday's Performance Today, learn more about Shostakovich's fifth symphony, then hear it performed by the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, from a concert in Birmingham, England.