Performance Today®

Listen to in-studio interviews with host Fred Child and exclusive musical performances by pianist Jenny Chen.

Conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt believed in the supremacy of the composer's voice. "A composer must be remembered, but a performer must be forgotten," Harnoncourt once said. But how could we not celebrate one of the most distinguished figures who brought that voice to life? On Tuesday's Performance Today, we'll honor the conductor who died over the weekend.

For decades, orchestras have used specific Parisian taxi horns in George Gershwin's An American in Paris. But new scholarship says those are the wrong notes! On Monday's Performance Today, we'll ponder taxi horn intonation and enjoy a great performance of this piece by the New York Philharmonic.

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 this weekend's Performance Today, we'll hear that piece: "A walk (for Emilio)."

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.