Performance Today®

On Wednesday's Performance Today, we'll go to a concert in Hamburg to hear Don Quixote, one of Richard Strauss' great tone poems. Plus, composer Bruce Adolphe joins us for this week's Piano Puzzler.

Sergei Rachmaninoff wrote his Symphonic Dances in 1940; it was the last major work he finished before he died. On Tuesday's Performance Today, we'll hear the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra give a dramatic performance of Rachmaninoff's last large work.

Conductor Gustavo Dudamel might be only 33 years old, but he has worked with great orchestras and soloists around the world. And he says violinist Janine Jansen's interpretation of the Violin Concerto by Mendelssohn is among the best he's ever heard. On Monday's Performance Today, we'll Jansen perform that piece in concert in Los Angeles.

On this weekend's Performance Today, we have musical highlights from around the world, including a performance of Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending by Hilary Hahn and the London Symphony Orchestra. Plus, Bruce Adolphe has this week's Piano Puzzler.

On Friday's Performance Today, we'll hear music that Sergei Prokofiev wrote for the satirical film Lieutenant Kije, which depicts the noble life and tragic death of a soldier who never existed.

Four years ago, Parker Quartet violist Jessica Bodner was worried; she was hoping for a stable residency at a university or a conservatory. Now our former PT Young Artists are in residence at a place called Harvard. Details and more on Thursday's 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.