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.
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.
Russian composer Alexander Scriabin was innovative and complex man. Leo Tolstoy described his music as "a sincere expression of genius"... and Scriabin himself would likely have agreed. On Thursday's Performance Today, learn more about Alexander Scriabin and hear his "Poem of Ecstasy" performed in concert by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.
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."
