Performance Today®

The Parker Quartet performs music by Erwin Schulhoff, and talks with Fred about why they're looking at the future through crimson-tinted glasses.

On Wednesday's Performance Today, we're highlighting musical celebrations of life and death. Hilary Hahn and the London Symphony play the Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra plays Henry Purcell's Funeral Music for Queen Mary, in concert at Carnegie Hall.

When Felix Mendelssohn went to Scotland, he saw the ruined chapel where Mary Queen of Scots had been crowned. He wrote, "Everything around is broken and mouldering, and the bright sky shines in...Today, I've found the beginning of my Scottish Symphony." On Tuesday's Performance Today, we'll hear the entirety of Mendelssohn's Scotland-inspired symphony.

David Grossman plays double bass as a member of the New York Philharmonic; we spoke with him in his home about the art of practicing. On Monday's Performance Today we'll hear highlights from that conversation, plus we'll hear Grossman and his colleagues play music by Mozart.

Conductor Donald Runnicles is the Music Director of the Grand Teton Music Festival in Teton Village, Wyoming. Plus, Runnicles knows his way around a piano keyboard. On this weekend's Performance Today, Donald Runnicles and his wife, Adele Eslinger Runnicles, join us to play music by Maurice Ravel.

"Rock Island Line" is about trains, the Mississippi River, and Bix Beiderbecke: in short, it's a brand-new piece about Davenport, Iowa. On Friday's Performance Today, we'll hear the world premiere of Jacob Bancks' Iowa-inspired piece from a concert by the Quad City Symphony Orchestra.

Every Friday on PT, we feature 21st century music. This week, composer Jacob Bancks joins us to help dissect his 2014 piece, "Rock Island Line."

On Thursday's Performance Today, we'll hear Jeffrey Kahane and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra play George Gershwin's original version of Rhapsody in Blue, complete with what Kahane calls "a kind of crackle and energy the big, lush Hollywood orchestrations simply can't duplicate."

On Wednesday's Performance Today, come play along on with our Piano Puzzler. Plus, we'll hear lesser known musical gems by Georg Muffat and Ernst von Dohnanyi.