When Martin Luther King, Jr. and Duke Ellington met in 1963, they talked about American music and life. Nine years later, Duke Ellington wrote a composition, Three Black Kings, in honor of Dr. King. On Monday's Performance Today, we'll hear that piece from a concert in Buffalo, New York, as part of our celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Jens Kruger's composition, Lucid Dreamer, was inspired by the idea of not just of controlling dreams while you're in them, but of living all of life as a lucid dream. On this weekend's Performance Today, we'll hear new music by Jens Kruger for the combination of Appalachian strings and string quartet.
Julia Fischer was 12 years old the first time she played the solo part in Beethoven's Violin Concerto. On Friday's Performance Today, we'll hear how she sounds after twenty years of practice, when we go to Zurich, Switzerland to hear Fischer and the Tonhalle Orchestra play Beethoven in concert.
On Thursday's Performance Today, we'll go to a concert at Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles to hear conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic play a piece that Felix Mendelssohn called his "celebration of a religious revolution."
Hey diddle diddle, a section of fiddles. The horn jumped over the moon. The audience cheered to hear such sport, and the flute ran away with the tune. On Wednesday's Performance Today, we'll hear the New York Philharmonic play Maurice Ravel's Mother Goose in concert at Lincoln Center.
Cuarteto Latinoamericano is a string quartet based in Mexico; it specializes in Latin American music. On Tuesday's Performance Today, we'll hear from a concert they gave recently in Palm Beach, Florida, where they played a string quartet by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos.
When you hear dramatic strings in a movie soundtrack, you can thank Erich Korngold. In the 1930s, he helped create the template for the Hollywood movie score. On Monday's Performance Today you may recognize the same epic sound in Korngold's Violin Concerto, which we'll hear from a concert in Los Angeles.
Violinist Joseph Joachim believed that there were only four great violin concertos written by German composers -- and one of them was written just for him, by his friend Johannes Brahms. On this weekend's Performance Today, we'll hear violinist James Ehnes play that Brahms Concerto in concert with the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra.
Violinist Yi-Wen Jiang has always loved Western classical music and traditional music from his native China. A few years ago he decided to combine elements of the two, and made some lively arrangements of Chinese folk songs for string quartet. On Friday's Performance Today, we'll hear the Shanghai Quartet play those arrangements in concert in Rockport, Massachusetts.
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