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When she was a teenager, Clara Wieck loved to write music. A day before her 21st birthday, Clara Wieck married a man who was a composer himself - Robert Schumann. She wrote a few more pieces in her 30s, but for the most part she gave up composition. Coming up on Thursday's Performance Today, a concert performance of the Piano Concerto that young Clara wrote before she was Clara Schumann.
What is a composition? Recently, pianist Orion Weiss listened very carefully to a recording of a piano improvisation that Keith Jarrett performed in 1984. He then wrote it down note for note, with the intent of performing it himself. On Wednesday's Performance Today we'll hear Weiss playing Keith Jarrett's improvisation/composition in concert in Seattle.
As a young composer Arvo Part wrote complex, aggressively modern music. Eventually he began to feel despair over that style of writing, so he stopped composing and spent several years listening to medieval music. He returned to composition a changed man, and his subsequent music had a completely different sound. On Tuesday's Performance Today we'll hear Fratres, one of the first pieces Arvo Part wrote after his musical conversion.
In 1928 George Gershwin sent a postcard to some friends. On the back were the words "Very Parisienne," a few notes of music, and "An American in Paris." Coming up on Monday's Performance Today, we'll hear the Los Angeles Philharmonic perform Gershwin's musical postcard in concert in Los Angeles.
When Gustavo Dudamel conducts, it's like his body is inhabited by the music; his physical expression of the music often has a energizing effect on the orchestra and the audience. Coming up on this weekend's Performance Today, Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic play Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in London.
The big game is coming up on Sunday: Seattle versus Denver in the Super Bowl. Sports pundits have spent the last two weeks poring over every possible angle - except one. Coming up on Friday's Performance Today, the Super Bowl from a classical music perspective, including game predictions by musicians from both cities and music performed by ensembles from Seattle and Colorado.
Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5 is often interpreted as an expression of immense sadness. But Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra conductor Manfred Honeck says that what Mahler meant was entirely different; he was writing a tender love song to the woman who was about to become his wife. On Thursday's Performance Today we'll hear Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony in concert in Berlin playing Mahler's Symphony No. 5.
Watch Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra perform Mahler's Symphony No. 5 at the Berlin Philharmonie.
In 1964 Leon Fleisher was one of the greatest young pianists in the world. But over the course of that year the ring and pinky fingers of his right hand began curling up tight. For decades there wasn't anything that doctors could do to help. Fleisher dealt with the situation by taking up conducting and teaching, but now he's back at the piano — with both hands. More with Leon Fleisher, on Wednesday's Performance Today.
