Performance Today®

The vast majority of what we hear on classical radio is music written by people who devoted their professional lives to music. The exceptions tend to be colorful characters -- people who made their living doing other things, but who love music. Amateurs in the true sense of the word. On today's show music by amateur composers. We'll hear a sweet lullaby for cello written by an expert on military fortifications, a string quartet composed by an insurance executive, exciting orchestral music by a low-level clerk in the French bureaucracy, and a symphony by a chemist.

On Monday's Performance Today we'll meet Xiang Yu, our newest Artist in Residence. This violinist grew up in Inner Mongolia, moved to Shanghai at age 11, then to Boston to study at the New England Conservatory in his late teens. Xiang Yu told Fred Child that even though he pressured himself to study music intensely at a young age, his parents were not Asian tiger parents. "More like cow mom and sheep dad," he said. His parents just wanted him to be happy. Xiang Yu will perform music by Bach in the PT studios.

Free MP3 downloads, video and interviews with talented violinist Xian Yu.

Conductor Harry Christophers says for him, Handel strikes every emotion in his body. At times it reduces him to tears, but most of the time it leaves him smiling like a Cheshire Cat. We'll have highlights from the Easter sections of Handel's Messiah on this weekend's Performance Today. Plus Harry Christophers talking (and grinning like a Cheshire Cat) about the music by Handel.

In all of Johann Sebastian Bach's musical output, the St. John Passion is probably the boldest experience in terms of dramatic expression. Conductor Bernard Labadie calls it a work filled with lava-like strings and brass sections that pierce like swords. We'll hear Labadie conduct the St. John Passion in a performance by Les Violins du Roy for Good Friday 2013.

One of the most meaningful concerts in the life of Josef Haydn took place in a darkened Spanish cathedral. It was music he wrote for a Good Friday service. Recently, poet Michael Dennis Browne wrote his own words to accompany Haydn's deeply thoughtful Good Friday music. "I surprised myself," he said, "just as the great Haydn surprised himself." We'll hear Haydn's "Seven Last Words of Christ," music with with new poetry by Browne, on Thursday's Performance Today.

Stephen Hough is a poet at the piano and on the page. He's also quite open about his weaknesses. Hough has written about questioning his career choice, battling ego issues, fighting his nerves, and overcoming moments when he says he fails to reach his own high standards. Nevertheless, Hough keeps trying. We'll hear this heroic pianist, from a live concert in Dallas, Texas on Wednesday's Performance Today.

Argentine composer and tango master Astor Piazzolla wrote dozens of pieces inspired by tango, but none more ethereal than the one we'll hear called Oblivion. We'll go to a concert by the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, in Houston for music by the tango master on Tuesday's Performance Today from APM.

Robert Schumann wrote a remarkable Arabesque for solo piano, but he certainly wasn't the only composer to use the title Arabesque. We'll hear Yefim Bronfman play the Schumann, in concert in New York as well as Arabesques by two other composers on Monday's Performance Today from APM.