Performance Today®

What does it take to play well with other musicians? The answer is revealed as Lydia Artymiw and the Miami String Quartet join Fred in the studio for music and conversation.

Robert Schumann wrote a piece that features four horns playing flat out over an orchestra. It's not played very often, because you need four super-talented horn players to pull it off. On Wednesday's Performance Today, we'll hear a performance of Schumann's horn-heavy concertstuck from an all-star concert in Aspen, Colorado.

Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 might be the most popular piece of classical music from the last century and a half. And on Tuesday's Performance Today, we'll hear it played by a gentleman who might be today's most popular classical pianist - Lang Lang.

On Monday's Performance Today, Camerata Pacifica plays a witty trio by 20th century English composer Madeleine Dring. Never heard of her? Join us to explore great music by composers whose work deserves to be heard more often.

Matthias Maute loves music from the early 1700s - partly because composers generally didn't write everything out. As he puts it, "you get only the melodies, and everything else must be invented." On this weekend's Performance Today, Maute and the rest of the ensemble REBEL join Fred in the studio for baroque music with a certain amount of improvisation.

On Friday's Performance Today, we'll hear highlights from recent concerts in Paris and New York. From New York, the ethereal Vocalise by Rachmaninoff; and from Paris, a rollicking performance of Dvorak's Violin Concerto.

It's a concert hall inside an old barge, floating on the East River in Brooklyn. From your concert seat, you can see the Manhattan skyline and feel the movement of the river. On Thursday's Performance Today, we'll go to Bargemusic to hear music by Bach.

Matthias Maute loves music from the early 1700s - partly because composers generally didn't write everything out. As he puts it, "you get only the melodies, and everything else must be invented." On Wednesday's Performance Today, Maute and the rest of the ensemble REBEL join Fred in the studio for baroque music with a certain amount of improvisation.

Early music ensemble REBEL joins Fred in the studio to perform early music and to discuss how they find room for improvisation in written scores.