Performance Today®

For the last 18 years of his life, Russian composer Alexander Borodin struggled to write an opera called "Prince Igor." He had a good excuse for his slow progress: he had a day job as a chemist. He only had time to compose on the weekends. Borodin's friends were so frustrated that he couldn't finish his opera, they even offered to help. In the end, Borodin died without finishing Prince Igor. His friends believed in the opera so much, they filled in the missing pieces. On Monday's Performance Today we'll hear one of the sections that Borodin did finish from a concert by the Nashville Symphony.

The Calidore String Quartet is our Young Artist in Residence, performing in the PT studios each day this week. On today's show, they'll finish what they began yesterday: the emotionally charged String Quartet No. 2 by Felix Mendelssohn. Violinist Ryan Meehan says playing this music is thrilling and exhausting. "That's the power of music," he said. Tune in for the conclusion of Mendelssohn's String Quartet No. 2 on Wednesday's Performance Today.

Musicians are often compared to athletes, but we usually don't have the numbers to do the analysis. On Friday's Performance Today, we'll quantify some speed: 72 notes played on a clarinet in seven seconds. That averages more than 10 notes per second. And in case you thought this is all sprint and no endurance, that pace continues for an entire page of music. Tune in for Carl Maria von Weber's lightning fast Clarinet Quintet with clarinetist David Shifrin giving Usain Bolt a run for his money.

French composer Cesar Franck didn't get much respect for his one and only symphony. One of his critics said it was "an admission of powerlessness." Another said it was "the negation of music." One Paris critic called it "painful, arid and gray music, devoid of grace, charm, and smile." Well, the work of those critics lives on only because the symphony they slandered lives on. It's music written in 1888 by the 66-year-old Cesar Franck. The only Symphony he ever wrote. We'll hear from a concert in Nashville. Gilbert Varga conducting the Nashville Symphony Orchestra.

The Calidore String Quartet is our Young Artist in Residence, performing in the PT studios each day this week. On today's show, they'll finish what they began yesterday: the emotionally charged String Quartet No. 2 by Felix Mendelssohn. Violinist Ryan Meehan says playing this music is thrilling and exhausting. "That's the power of music," he said. Tune in for the conclusion of Mendelssohn's String Quartet No. 2 on Wednesday's Performance Today.

It's tough sometimes, just getting along and communicating as a string quartet. On Tuesday's show we'll hear from the Calidore String Quartet, our young artists in residence. They study at the Colburn School in Los Angeles. Violinist Ryan Meehan says string quartets succeed when they're rooted in trust and respect. When they don't work as well, he says, string quartets look a lot like a television reality show. Musicians stop being polite and start to get real on Performance Today.

Today, Alina Pogostkina is a professional violinist. Twenty years ago, she was a homeless eight year-old street musician. Her family was destitute when they moved from the collapsed Soviet Union to Heidelberg, Germany in 1992. For a while they survived by playing music on the streets -- father, mother, and eight year-old daughter, all playing their violins. On Monday's Performance Today, the remarkable story of violinist Alina Pogostkina.

Free MP3 downloads, video and interviews with the exciting young ensemble The Calidore String Quartet.

The music lay untouched and unheard for over a half century, covered with the dust of World War Two and the Holocaust. Composer Hans Gal was a well-known figure in Vienna's classical music world until the 1930s when he fled the Nazis and landed in Edinburgh, Scotland and relative obscurity. More than a half century later, conductor Kenneth Woods and England's Orchestra of the Swan took out Gal's last symphony, dusted off the cobwebs, and shone some sunlight on the music. On Wednesday's Performance Today we'll hear the modern premiere of Gal's final symphony from a concert in Statford-upon-Avon, England.