Performance Today®

When the 25-year-old Mozart was working in Munich, his pal Friedrich Ramm played oboe in the local orchestra. In his spare time between rehearsals, Mozart wrote a special quartet for Friedrich. On Thursday's Performance Today we'll hear Mozart's music for a friend from a concert in Charleston, South Carolina.

Italian composer Ottorino Respighi once said, "I wonder why no one has made the fountains of Rome 'sing,' for they are, after all, the very voice of the city." No one else had done it, so Respighi did. On Wednesday's Performance Today we'll hear "The Fountains of Rome," Respighi's homage to the unique voice of Rome.

We met young American violinist Will Hagen this summer at the Aspen Festival, where he was a member of a student quartet. On Tuesday's Performance Today he'll make his solo debut on PT, playing a violin concerto by Saint-Saens.

On Monday's Performance Today, we'll hear a concert from Shakespeare's hometown. The poetically named Orchestra of the Swan playing music by Robert Schumann.

When he took a Soviet orchestra on a U.S. tour in 1991, conductor Edvard Tchivzhel decided to defect; the result is a tale of Cold War intrigue in which Chuck E. Cheese plays a central role. We have the full story on this weekend's Performance Today, plus Tchivzhel conducting a recent concert in South Carolina.

Franz Schubert's music encompasses so much of the human condition. On Friday's Performance Today, Imogen Cooper talks more about Schubert, and performs a selection from one of his last works: Klavierstucke.

Richard Wagner's operas are so epic, they're sometimes an inch away from being self-parody. On Thursday's Performance Today, the Cleveland Orchestra gives a serious (and seriously great) performance of the Ride of the Valkyries.

Violinists work for years to be able to play just one of Niccolo Paganini's 24 caprices. Then along came a pianist who said, "anything you can do, I can do better." On Wednesday's Performance Today we'll hear the result of that attitude: Sergei Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini.

Just south of San Francisco, the 2014 Music@Menlo Festival is in full swing. PT will be there later this week, and in the meantime we'll bring you concert highlights from Menlo, including a string quartet by Franz Schubert featuring cellist and Music@Menlo founder, David Finckel.