Performance Today®

When pianist Jonathan Biss was a child, he adored Mozart's 22nd concerto. He even listened to a favorite recording of the concerto so many times that he wore out the tape! Coming up on Tuesday's Performance Today, we'll hear Biss play music he adores.

There are a few graceful, bursting sunrises in music. One by Richard Strauss, which became the iconic soundtrack for the film "2001: A Space Odyssey." And there's one in the ballet "Daphnis and Chloe" by Maurice Ravel. On Monday's Performance Today, we'll hear a new musical sunrise by American composer John Mackey: "Aurora Awakes."

We'll go to a concert in Munich to hear the Bavarian Radio Symphony play Johannes Brahms' "Variations on a Theme by Haydn." Except...the theme is not really by Haydn. The story and the music on this weekend's Performance Today.

When the New York Philharmonic asked composer Mark Anthony Turnage to write a musical response to Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, he was scared stiff. But the music that Turnage came up with is anything but stiff; it's sly, witty, daring. We'll hear Turnage's piece, Frieze, on Friday's Performance Today.

In 1902, Gustav Klimt created the Beethoven Frieze, a massive painting inspired Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

The opening of Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra" is incredibly memorable. You can sing along with every bit of it: the trumpet, the timpani, the big dramatic chords. On Thursday's Performance Today, we'll hear the entirety of Strauss' most spine-chilling composition.

We're familiar with composer Richard Wagner in his later years; wealthy, discerning, respected. We don't hear as much about young Wagner, who was once in so much debt that he, his wife, and their dog had to climb through a muddy ditch to get away from the police. Coming up on Wednesday's Performance Today, the music that gave Wagner his big break and enabled him to move from muddy moocher to silk tie wearing composer.

In 1909, a Parisian ballet company wanted to create a new production inspired by the old Russian tale of the Firebird. Their first composer quit. Three more composers either failed or turned down the job. In desperation, they turned to their fifth choice: an unknown 27 year old named Igor Stravinsky. We'll hear the music that made Stravinsky's career on Tuesday's Performance Today.

Alexander Melnikov joins host Fred Child in the studio to talk about overcoming nervousness and the depths of Franz Schubert's most difficult piece, "The Wanderer Fantasy."