Performance Today®

French composer Gabriel Faure spent five weeks on vacation in Venice. The feel and mood and music of the city, though, stayed with him. Over the next several decades, he wrote 20 pieces inspired by Venice. On Friday's Performance Today we'll hear one of those pieces, a musical image of the famous gondolas.

Growing up, composer Benjamin Britten's house had a great view of the North Sea. He saw the ocean first thing in the morning. He saw it by moonlight. He saw it calm and placid and through the havoc of tumultuous storms. It was a deep part of Britten and he brought the sea to life in music, just as real as any human opera character. We'll hear Britten's Sea Interludes from the BBC Proms on Thursday's Performance Today.

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 they arrived, the two brothers were killed by a single German shell. On Wednesday's Performance Today we'll hear music Ravel wrote this in memory of his friends Pierre and Pascal, Le Tombeau do Couperin. And we'll sample music celebrating new life, the birth of a royal baby.

At a time of tremendous uncertainty and instability for several American orchestras, the Buffalo Philharmonic is a model of certainty and stability. That allows the Buffalo Philharmonic to focus on making music. On Tuesday's Performance Today, we'll hear the rich, warm sound of the Buffalo Philharmonic as JoAnn Falletta conducts music by Antonin Dvorak.

Russian pianist Irina Nuzova says that even though Sergei Rachmaninoff moved away from Russia, his music was always fundamentally Russian. "You can always hear in his every note, every melody," she said, "where he comes from. That his heart was there." On Monday's Performance Today Irina Nuzova and Wendy Warner join Fred Child to talk about, and to play Romantic Russian music for cello and piano.

American cellist Wendy Warner and Russian pianist Irina Nuzova are a study in contrasts, but they share one important interest: Russian music for cello and piano.

On this weekenda€™s Performance Today, we'll sample from a concert that the Boston Symphony and pianist Peter Serkin gave at their summer home in Tanglewood, Massachusetts. It was the perfect night for a concert outdoors: a temperate New England summer evening with the stars coming out overhead, and an amiable audience of 16,000 enjoying great music as Beethoven's Choral Fantasy wafted over the breeze.

On Friday's Performance Today, we'll sample from a concert that the Boston Symphony and pianist Peter Serkin gave at their summer home in Tanglewood, Massachusetts. It was the perfect night for a concert outdoors: a temperate New England summer evening with the stars coming out overhead, and an amiable audience of 16,000 enjoying great music as Beethoven's Choral Fantasy wafted over the breeze.

Every day on PT, we have concert highlights you can't hear anyplace else. On Thursday's show, we'll take you to a concert hall with what might be the best view in the world of classical music. The Shalin Liu Center is right on the Atlantic coastline in Rockport, Massachusetts. And if you draw back the curtain right the stage, the audience gets a view through a floor to ceiling window of the bay that opens into the Atlantic Ocean. Clouds dancing overhead, and fishing boats on the water provide just the right background for a performance by marimba soloist Mika Yoshida.