Performance Today®

When he was 5 years old, Conrad Tao began taking piano lessons with a gentleman named Emilio del Rosario. Rosario had a profound influence on Tao's musical life and now, almost 20 years later, Conrad Tao has written a piece in honor of his former teacher. On Friday's Performance Today, we'll hear that piece: "A walk (for Emilio)."

If you saw Mickey Mouse in "Fantasia," you might remember the moral of the story: don't try to do too much. French composer Paul Dukas followed that advice. He wrote one opera, one ballet, one symphony, and one famous tone poem - The Sorcerer's Apprentice. On Thursday's Performance Today, we'll hear that piece from a concert in Buffalo, New York.

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.

The Isle of the Dead is a painting of a dark, forbidding island. After viewing it, Sergei Rachmaninoff was inspired to write a symphonic poem; a musical depiction of the journey of a newly departed soul. On Tuesday's Performance Today, we'll hear Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead in concert from Nashville.

Franz Schubert wrote a fantasy so demanding and difficult that he himself was unable to play it. Never fear - we'll hear from a pianist who can! On Monday's Performance Today, Juho Pohjonen gives a virtuosic performance of the Wanderer Fantasy in concert at the Music@Menlo Festival.

As Detroit Symphony's Caen Thomason-Redus points out, the audience that classical music has traditionally attracted is becoming a smaller percentage of society, while the audience that classical music has traditionally not attracted is becoming a bigger portion. What does this mean? On this weekend's Performance Today, Caen Thomason-Redus will join Fred for conversation as we begin our year long series on diversity in classical music.

French horn player James Rose has an excellent point about the evolution of American classical music. As he puts it, there is a massive diverse population that is coming towards the symphony orchestra - and that means American orchestras need to change. On Friday's Performance Today, James Rose joins our ongoing discussion about diversity in classical music.

The past and future of classical music belongs to everyone. As Lee Koonce points out, people of African descent have been involved in classical music for centuries; there was even a black trumpet player in Henry VII's court. On Thursday's Performance Today, we'll hear more from Lee Koonce about diversity in classical music.

In 1996 Aaron Dworkin founded the Sphinx Organization, which is dedicated to supporting Black and Latino string players. At the time, people would tell him that Sphinx was a nice idea, but that the talent wasn't really out there. Nowadays, he doesn't hear that anymore. On Wednesday's Performance Today, we'll hear more from Aaron Dworkin about the changes he's seen in the last 20 years.