American Public Media’s Performance Today® is America’s most popular classical music radio program and a winner of the 2014 Gabriel Award for artistic achievement. The show is broadcast on hundreds of public radio stations across the country, including at 1 p.m. central weekdays on Minnesota Public Radio. More information about our stations can be found at APM Distribution.
Soprano Sharleen Joynt talks about covering a role at the Metropolitan Opera, her appearance on the TV show The Bachelor, and how a career in opera begs difficult questions about what is important in life.
Coming up on Wednesday's Performance Today, we'll explore the lyrical voice of the double bass with our new Young Artist in Residence: virtuoso double bassist TianYang Liu.
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.
