Performance Today®

The great American pianist Van Cliburn passed away one year ago today. In this special program we'll remember the legendary musician through interviews, music, and more.

The 2014 Sphinx Competition took place last week in Detroit. On Thursday's Performance Today we'll hear the winning performance, plus we'll speak with the winner of this year's competition: 19-year-old bass soloist Xavier Foley.

On the first anniversary of Van Cliburn's passing, his Texas hometown hosted a massive concert in his honor. Come view the video of the concert here.

Composer Maurice Ravel was a dear friend of the Gaudin family. When World War One began, the brothers Pascal and Pierre Gaudin proudly signed up for the French army. On the day the brothers arrived at the front, they were both killed by a single German shell. On Wednesday's Performance Today we'll hear Le tombeau de Couperin, a piece that Ravel wrote in memory of his friends Pierre and Pascal.

The Isle of the Dead is a painting of a dark, forbidding island. After viewing it, Sergei Rachmaninoff was inspired to write a symphonic poem; a musical depiction of the journey of a newly departed soul. On Tuesday's Performance Today, we'll hear the Los Angeles Philharmonic perform Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead in concert in Los Angeles.

In 1999, conductor Daniel Barenboim and his good friend, author Edward Said, decided to found an orchestra made of up both Israeli and Arab musicians: the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. On Monday's Performance Today we'll hear Barenboim conducting the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in concert in Ramallah.

On this weekend's Performance Today, we'll hear a great American band play a great American symphony. Plus Bruce Adolphe joins us for this week's Piano Puzzler.

Joshua Smith is the principal flutist of the Cleveland Orchestra. In recent years, he and a few friends have been playing classical concerts at a local bar with astonishing results. On Friday's Performance Today, Smith talks about playing Beethoven and more at the Happy Dog in Cleveland.

On Thursday's Performance Today conductor, pianist and candid commentator Bill Eddins joins host Fred Child in the studio to take listeners on a tour of his favorite pieces of classical music. He talks about the unappreciated humor in Beethoven's symphonies, the sly keyboard prowess of Alicia de Larrocha, and reveals what he calls "the sexiest piece of classical music ever written."