Performance Today®

Recently, violinist Ani Kavafian and pianist Inon Barnatan took the stage at Alice Tully Hall in New York City. On Thursday's Performance Today we'll hear two pieces from that concert that'll melt your heart: Clara Schumann's Romances for violin. Plus, we'll head to Warsaw, Poland to hear a suite from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt.

Every year, Holocaust Remembrance Day is set aside to commemorate the millions of lives stolen during World War II. On Wednesday's Performance Today we will honor the day with a symphony by a composer who lost his life in Auschwitz; Marcel Tyberg's The Symphony No. 3.

After hearing Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 8, a critic said the music provided "a glimpse of the infinite." On Tuesday's Performance Today, the Dallas Symphony will give us a peek into the immensity of Bruckner's last completed symphony.

The Kalevala is the national epic poem of Finland, with more than 22,000 verses. Composer Jean Sibelius told stories from the Kalevala in music; on Monday's Performance Today we'll hear up about 7,000 of those verses from a piece called Lemminkainen.

On this weekend's Performance Today, mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile will join Fred in the studio to co-host an hour of PT. He'll play some Bach, and talk about seeing his favorite Mahler symphony in concert. The musical enthusiasms of Chris Thile, on the next Performance Today.

On Friday's Performance Today, mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile will join Fred in the studio to co-host an hour of PT. He'll play some Bach, and talk about seeing his favorite Mahler symphony in concert. The musical enthusiasms of Chris Thile, on the next Performance Today.

By it's very definition, a scherzo is a musical joke: spritely and playful. On Thursday's Performance Today, we'll hear a scherzo by Felix Mendelssohn that fits that definition exactly -- right down to a smirk. From a concert at Seattle's Benaroya Hall, we'll hear the scherzo from Mendelssohn's Piano Trio No. 2.

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.

Tuesday's Performance Today features an all-star performance by players from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; we'll hear some of the finest chamber musicians in the country play Ernst von Dohnanyi's Piano Quintet No. 1 from a concert they gave on tour in Athens, Georgia.