Performance Today®

Cellist Shannon Hayden has always planned for a life in the arts.

Pianist Stephen Hough remembers the terrible car accident that nearly ended his life with crystal clarity. On Thursday's Performance Today, Hough discusses facing mortality and returning to the beauty of this world.

The Aspen Music Festival appears utterly graceful. But, as Chief Piano Technician Peter Sumner puts it, "it's a bit like a duck swimming on a pond; all you see is the duck gliding across, but underneath everything is paddling like crazy." On Wednesday's Performance Today, Sumner gives us a behind-the-scenes peek at what it's like to maintain the Festival's 200 pianos.

Alisa Weilerstein grew up going to the Aspen Music Festival almost every summer of her childhood. There, she learned about music and life, and made incredible friendships that she still cherishes. On Tuesday's Performance Today, we'll hear Alisa Weilerstein in concert and in conversation at the Aspen Music Festival.

Every day this week, we'll have highlights from one of the greatest music festivals on the planet: the Aspen Music Festival in Aspen, Colorado. On Monday's Performance Today, we'll begin Gil Shaham's emotional performance of J.S. Bach's Violin Concerto in A minor.

Every week composer Bruce Adolphe joins us for a musical game; our Piano Puzzler. Bruce re-writes a familiar tune in the style of a great composer, and we get one of our listeners on the phone who tries to guess the hidden tune and the composer whose style Bruce is imitating. Play along with the Piano Puzzler, on this weekend's Performance Today.

On Friday's Performance Today, we'll hear music by two members of the Bach family. First, a rarely played symphony by CPE Bach from a concert in Copenhagen. And then, an Orchestral Suite by Papa Bach, Johann Sebastian, from a concert in Switzerland.

Edward Elgar composed almost nothing during the First World War. He said: "I cannot do any real work with this awful shadow hanging over us." But, after four years of mechanized death on a scale the world had never seen, he began writing his Cello Concerto. On Thursday's Performance Today, we'll hear that piece from a concert in Los Angeles.

Every week composer Bruce Adolphe joins us for a musical game; our Piano Puzzler. Bruce re-writes a familiar tune in the style of a great composer, and we get one of our listeners on the phone who tries to guess the hidden tune and the composer whose style Bruce is imitating. Play along with the Piano Puzzler, on Wednesday's Performance Today.