Performance Today®

Around the world today is Remembrance Day or Armistice Day. Here in the U.S., November 11th is Veterans Day. On Wednesday's Performance Today, we'll honor those who've served our country in uniform.

As an adult, Gustav Mahler wrote nine and a half massive symphonies and destroyed nearly all the music he'd written as a teenager. Nearly all of it; but not his Piano Quartet in a minor, which he wrote as a skinny bespectacled 15-year-old. On Tuesday's Performance Today, we'll hear Mahler's Piano Quartet from a concert in Savannah, Georgia.

The combination of harp and guitar isn't exactly traditional. But that doesn't discourage harpist Yolanda Kondonassis and guitarist Jason Vieaux, who love the way their instruments sound together. On Monday's Performance Today, this unique duo will join Fred in the studio for music and conversation.

The Hawai'i Symphony Orchestra asked Byron Yasui to write a concerto for ukulele. He wasn't quite sure that he could balance the quiet ukulele with the power of an orchestra, but he accepted the challenge. On this weekend's Performance Today, we'll hear the world premiere of Yasui's concerto in Honolulu.

The Hawai'i Symphony Orchestra asked Byron Yasui to write a concerto for ukulele. He wasn't quite sure that he could balance the quiet ukulele with the power of an orchestra, but he accepted the challenge. On Friday's Performance Today, we'll hear the world premiere of Yasui's concerto in Honolulu.

Ferruccio Busoni's Piano Concerto is a massive, ambitious piece of music for full orchestra, 48 male singers, and a really, really good pianist. On Thursday's Performance Today, we'll hear it from a concert last month in Warsaw, featuring Garrick Ohlsson and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra.

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.

Ignacy Jan Paderewski was a dashing, virtuosic pianist around the turn of the 20th century. And later, he was the Prime Minister of Poland. On Tuesday's Performance Today, we'll hear his Piano Concerto No. 1 from a concert in his hometown of Warsaw.

Beethoven could barely hear when he conducted the premiere of his Symphony No. 8 in 1814. So, the orchestra ignored him and followed the first violinist. Conductor Jane Glover and the Aspen Chamber Orchestra had no such problems. On Monday's Performance Today, we'll hear their elegant performance of Beethoven's Eight.