Performance Today®

Each week on our Piano Puzzler, composer Bruce Adolphe re-writes a familiar tune in the style of a classical composer. We then get one of our listeners on the phone to try to guess the tune and the composer whose style Bruce is imitating. Play along with our Piano Puzzler, on this weekend's Performance Today.

The Chiara String Quartet memorizes its repertoire before setting foot on stage. That may sound overwhelming, but according to them, making the decision to lose the music was freeing. On Friday's Performance Today, the Chiara String Quartet joins Fred in the studio for music and conversation.

The ensemble joins host Fred Child in the studio to play Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout by their friend, composer Gabriela Lena Frank. Members of the Chiara String Quartet also talk about what it means to play music "by heart."

This past fall, violinist Karen Gomyo was asked, at the last minute, to sit in with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Her task? To play the demanding solo part of Jean Sibelius' Violin Concerto. So, how did Gomyo do? Listen and find out on Thursday's Performance Today.

Each week on our Piano Puzzler, composer Bruce Adolphe re-writes a familiar tune in the style of a classical composer. We then get one of our listeners on the phone to try to guess the tune and the composer whose style Bruce is imitating. Play along with our Piano Puzzler, on Wednesday's Performance Today.

For 150 years, nobody was sure who wrote a particular, mysterious cello concerto. Then in 1951, the original manuscript was discovered...and it was clearly signed by Joseph Haydn. On Tuesday's Performance Today, we'll hear a cello concerto that's definitely by Haydn, played by cellist Alisa Weilerstein and the Aspen Chamber Symphony.

Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 is a monumental work, and on Monday's Performance Today we will hear it from a gorgeous location; nestled right between the Cascade mountains and Puget Sound. The Eroica symphony, from a concert at the Bellingham Music Festival in Washington State.

Bruce Adolphe joins us every week with a musical game; our Piano Puzzler. On this weekend's PT, play along to see if you can guess the hidden tune and the composer whose style Bruce is imitating.

The Chinese lute, or pipa, has been around for more than two thousand years. On Friday's Performance Today, we'll hear a 21st century composition for pipa performed by Wu Man and the Buffalo Philharmonic.