Performance Today®

Every week on our Piano Puzzler, composer Bruce Adolphe re-writes a familiar tune in the style of a classical composer. Play along on this weekend's Performance Today to see if you can guess the tune and the composer whose style Bruce is mimicking.

On Friday's Performance Today, we're exploring music inspired by bird song. First, we'll head to this summer's BBC Proms in London to hear Maurice Ravel's imitation of a sad blackbird. Then, we'll hear the sounds of doves, hens, nightingales and cuckoos from a concert in Los Angeles.

The first ever Van Cliburn Junior Piano Competition took place this summer. On Thursday's Performance Today, we'll hear 16-year-old Russian pianist Arsenii Mun give a medal-winning performance during the final round of the competition.

Every week on our Piano Puzzler, composer Bruce Adolphe re-writes a familiar tune in the style of a classical composer. Play along on Wednesday's Performance Today to see if you can guess the tune and the composer whose style Bruce is mimicking.

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 Tuesday's Performance Today, we'll hear violinist James Ehnes play that Brahms Concerto in concert with the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra.

What do you get when you have an orchestra and two solo timpanists playing nine kettle drums? It's either madness...or it's a piece by Philip Glass. Then again, could it be both? On Monday's Performance Today, we'll go to a concert in Montreal to decide.

On this weekend's Performance Today, we'll have highlights from the 2015 Grand Teton Music Festival. Among them, the festival's Music Director, Donald Runnicles, joins Fred Child for an on stage chat before teaming up with cellist Joel Noyes to play music by Robert Schumann.

All summer long we have featured great music inspired by distinctive American places. On Friday's Performance Today, our summer road trip reaches its final stop. We'll hear a new piece by Timothy Mahr called "by blue lake, listening, dreaming" -- music that describes a very special setting in Michigan's Manistee National Forest.

Great music can make a great film. Where would Frozen be without a singing snowman? What would deep space sound like without Arvo Part? And where would the Force be without John Williams' iconic compositions? On Thursday's Performance Today, we'll hear all this music and more, as we explore unforgettable movie music.