American Public Media’s Performance Today® is America’s most popular classical music radio program and a winner of the 2014 Gabriel Award for artistic achievement. The show is broadcast on hundreds of public radio stations across the country, including at 1 p.m. central weekdays on Minnesota Public Radio. More information about our stations can be found at APM Distribution.
When Claude Debussy wrote music for the ballet "Jeux," he was picturing a game of tennis between two young women and one young man. In tennis, "love" means nothing; in Debussy's music, love is everything. On Wednesday's Performance Today, we'll hear romance and seduction on the courts, from a concert by the New York Philharmonic.
Beethoven's Eroica Symphony is a monumental work. On Tuesday's Performance Today, we'll hear it from a monumentally beautiful place; Festival Mozaic in San Luis Obispo, California - right between the ocean and the mountains.
If you've ever been to a concert by the Canadian Brass, you've noticed that they violate a cardinal rule of men's fashion. They wear white athletic sneakers with formal black pants. On Monday's Performance today, we have music from the Canadian Brass and the secret behind their fashion faux-pas.
He's still in his 20s, but conductor Joshua Weilerstein is already making a tremendous impression on orchestras and audiences around the world. On this weekend's Performance Today, Joshua Weilerstein leads the Verbier Festival Orchestra in Saint-Saens' Violin Concerto No. 3, featuring Joshua Bell.
He's still in his 20s, but conductor Joshua Weilerstein is already making a tremendous impression on orchestras and audiences around the world. On Friday's Performance Today, Joshua Weilerstein leads the Verbier Festival Orchestra in Saint-Saens' Violin Concerto No. 3, featuring Joshua Bell.
Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero has been playing the Piano Concerto by Edvard Grieg since she was 11 years old... her original copy of the music is decorated with the Hello Kitty stickers. Montero is now 46, and she just recently bought a new copy of the music. On Thursday's Performance Today, the ever-youthful Gabriela Montero performs Grieg's Piano Concerto with the Houston Symphony, Andres Orozco-Estrada conducting.
London-based composer Arthur Jeffes joins Ria Misra, host of the second season of our Music is Music podcast, to kick things off with a two-part episode on music in space.
In the spring of 1873, Giuseppe Verdi went to Naples to oversee a production of his opera, Aida. Rehearsals were postponed when the star soprano got sick. Verdi had some free time, so he wrote a string quartet, and it has stood the test of time. On Wednesday's Performance Today, hear Orion String Quartet play Verdi's Quartet in E minor, from a concert in Athens, Georgia.
In 1825, Ludwig van Beethoven got terribly sick. For a month, all he could do was lie miserably in bed. He began to think that he may not survive the illness. Beethoven recovered, and, so grateful for the gift of life, he expressed his gratitude in music. Hear the Pacifica Quartet play Beethoven's heartfelt "thank-you", his String Quartet No. 15, on Tuesday's Performance Today.
