Performance Today®

Alex Beyer, 22, is working on a unique and challenging combination of academic degrees. He studies mathematics at Harvard AND is working on a Master's degree in piano at the New England Conservatory. To Alex, math and music are artistically intertwined. Join us for day 2 of our current PT Young Artist in Residence, pianist Alex Beyer, on Tuesday's Performance Today.

Jan Dussek, a Czech pianist and composer, was a contemporary of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. He wrote more than a dozen concertos for piano and orchestra, though he's not nearly as well remembered as his contemporaries. On Monday's Performance Today, learn more about Jan Dussek, and hear pianist Andreas Staier play Dussek's Piano Concerto in G Minor in a performance from Warsaw, Poland.

Listen to in-studio interviews with host Fred Child and exclusive musical performances by pianist Alex Beyer.

Tempesta di Mare - the Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra - is celebrating the 15th anniversary of their Philadelphia Concert Series. On Saturday's Performance Today, join the audience as Tempesta di Mare plays a concerto for two recorders by William Babell. You'll also hear this week's Piano Puzzler with Bruce Adolphe.

Trolls, goblins, and gnomes - we'll join them all in the Hall of the Mountain King. On Friday's Performance Today, we'll hear Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite; plus, pianist Joyce Yang plays Grieg's Piano Concerto in concert at the Aspen Festival.

Christoph von Dohnanyi is a rarity among conductors. Not only is he respected by the orchestras that he works with, he is loved and greatly admired by them as well. On Thursday's Performance Today, Christoph von Dohnanyi leads the New York Philharmonic in Symphony No. 9, the 'New World Symphony', by Antonin Dvorak.

In 1996, a group of musical friends got together and formed an ensemble that would focus on playing Baroque era music. They named their group Tempesta di Mare ('The Storm at Sea'), inspired by the subtitle of a Vivaldi concerto. On Wednesday's Performance Today, hear Tempesta di Mare play a concerto for two recorders by William Babell, from a concert performed in their hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Camille Saint-Saens completed his last symphony in 1886, and said "I gave everything to it I was able to give. What I have here accomplished, I will never achieve again." It's a rare composition for full orchestra and organ. On Tuesday's Performance Today, hear Saint-Saen's Symphony No. 3, the 'Organ Symphony', performed by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, with Thierry Escaich on the organ.

In the 1850's, nine year-old Antonin Dvorak became transfixed by trains and railroads. In the following decades, the composer made visits to train stations a part of his daily life. In 1884, a musical theme popped into his head, triggered by the sound an arriving train. On Monday's Performance Today, hear this inspired theme and more of Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 7, in a concert performance by the Nashville Symphony.