Performance Today®

'Tis the season for winter holiday music. On Monday's Performance Today, we'll hear performances from near and far; music for the Christmas season from concert halls, churches, and auditoriums around the world.

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 this weekend's Performance Today.

Conductor Simon Rattle has known The Nutcracker since he was a kid, and with each passing year he becomes more fascinated with the music. On Friday's Performance Today, Simon Rattle conducts the Berlin Philharmonic in The Nutcracker "B-sides;" the sometimes overlooked, but still heart-tugging and toe-tapping dances from the rest of Tchaikovsky's beloved ballet.

Antonin Dvorak wrote his Bagatelles for a dear friend; they were composed as a gift, and never intended for a wider audience. But luckily for us, they got out. On Thursday's Performance Today, we'll hear Dvorak's Bagatelles from a concert on Long Island. Plus, we'll head to England for a recent concert performance of Robert Schumann's Spring Symphony.

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.

Conductor Jeffrey Kahane loves Britten's Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge. He says that it's simultaneously majestic, mysterious, sentimental, hilarious, heartbreaking, dazzlingly cerebral, and in the end, profound. On Tuesday's Performance Today, we'll hear it from a concert in Los Angeles.

Grown-up's memories of childhood, captured in music. Pianist Simone Dinnerstein says the Scenes from Childhood by Robert Schumann are full of a sense of child-like wonder, and a sense of loss. On Monday's Performance Today, we'll hear Dinnerstein play Schumann's Scenes from Childhood in concert in Texas.

On this weekend's Today, we'll hear sparkling music from CMS Two, an elite program for young players run by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York City.

The trombone players in the Buffalo Philharmonic asked composer Eric Ewazen if he would write something especially for them. Ewazen loved the idea and came up with his Triple Concerto for Three Trombones and Orchestra. On Friday's Performance Today, we'll go to Buffalo to hear it in concert.