Performance Today®

At first, Rafal Blechacz didn't want to play piano. He had dreams of playing the organ... but he came to realize that the piano was the right instrument for him. We won't argue with that! On Monday's Performance Today, pianist Rafal Blechacz plays Brahms in concert with the Minnesota Orchestra and conductor Osmo Vanska.

It's a story of music inspired by a complicated love triangle and a song with mysterious power. Hear Joshua Bell play the "Poeme" by Ernest Chausson, on Saturday's Performance Today.

American composer John Adams says he's been obsessed with Beethoven's string quartets since he was a kid. In 2012, he took moments from those pieces and created a kind of mash-up for string quartet AND orchestra. On today's show, take a seat next to us at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and hear the results of Adams's work... 'Absolute Jest'.

Pianist Emanuel Ax has won seven Grammy Awards, an Avery Fisher Prize, and he's soloed with the New York Philharmonic more than a hundred times. On Thursday's Performance Today, Emanuel Ax gives a thrilling performance of Beethoven's last piano concerto, the Emperor Concerto.

Clarinetist Jon Manasse and pianist Jon Nakamatsu love making music together. On Wednesday's Peformance Today, hear them play "Four Views", a piece written for them by composer Gordon Goodwin.

On Tuesday's Performance Today, Louis Langree conducts the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra with pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk playing Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. And then... Gavrylyuk gives a dazzling souped-up solo encore.

Rebecca Clarke was an English composer and violist who grew up at a time when there weren't many opportunities for female composers and musicians. Happily, she lived long enough to see her work played and appreciated around the world. On Monday's Performance Today, hear Rebecca Clarke's 'Morpheus', a piece that she debuted in 1918 under the pen name of... Anthony Trent.

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

Composer Laurence Sherr has dedicated his career to sharing the musical history of the Holocaust. in 2014, Sherr wrote a piece that borrowed melodies from several Jewish resistance songs. On Friday's Performance Today, hear 'Myr zaynen do!' (We are here!) by Laurence Sherr.