Performance Today®

How often have you listened to a piece of music and thought, "What on earth was the composer thinking when he/she wrote that?" Usually that reaction is reserved for something we don't like. But American composer Kevin Puts took on the question in a serious, thoughtful way. He started with the first movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, and wondered what inspired him to write it. The result is an engaging new piece, "Inspiring Beethoven." We'll hear it from a concert in North Carolina.

American composer Gabriela Lena Frank paid tribute to her Peruvian heritage when she wrote a new chamber piece in 2010. It's called "Hilos," which means "Threads." The title is a reference to the beautiful woven textiles from the Andean region. But the idea of threads also refers to the common language of music, and how different musical styles can be woven together into a common fabric. Gabriela Lena Frank and the Alias Chamber Ensemble join host Fred Child in the PT studios today for a performance of "Hilos."

Music that connects Peruvian and American traditions.

To many in the audience sitting in the Champs-Elysees Theater in Paris, what unfolded before them was ghastly, unthinkable, an affront to the senses. Like finding that someone laced your ice cream with jalapeno peppers. Noses wrinkled, ears prickled, and eventually, fists started flying. It was the premiere of the most revolutionary piece of music of the 20th century, Igor Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." This year marks the centennial of the ballet. We'll revisit that day in Paris 100 years ago, and the riot that ensued. And we'll hear a peaceful performance from New York City.

"It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." Those opening lines from Dickens'"A Tale of Two Cities" are burned into almost everyone's consciousness. But what about the rest of the book? Who can quote that? In today's show, we'll have another great opening line, the sunrise from "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Everyone knows it from the film "2001: A Space Odyssey." Plus, we'll hear the part no one remembers. Gustavo Dudamel leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the complete half-hour tone poem by Richard Strauss.

Conductor Simon Rattle joins us to introduce the Symphony No. 2 by Johannes Brahms. Rattle says "this is a work where real unalloyed joy comes out, and that, in all of Brahms' output, is fairly rare." Rattle also weighs in on Brahms' gruff, very German sense of humor. And we'll go to a concert in Berlin, with Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in the complete symphony.

The young Sergei Prokofiev was fed up with critics who thought he could only write crunchy, avant-garde music. So he threw them a musical curve ball, his "Classical" symphony, written in a Haydnesque style. He called it "a challenge to tease the geese." David Robertson leads the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Prokofiev's First Symphony, in concert at the iconic Opera House in Sydney, Australia.

Would you rather be married to someone who does exactly what you do for a living? Someone who knows every little inside joke, every nuance and intricacy of your profession? Or would you rather be with someone who does something completely different, who can open up a new world to you? In 2010, Orion Weiss and Anna Polonsky decided that a two-piano household was a good thing, and they got married. In today's show, Polonsky and Weiss share how they balance music and marriage, and they play the Poulenc Concerto for Two Pianos in Buffalo.

The young Sergei Prokofiev was fed up with critics who thought he could only write crunchy, avant-garde music. So he threw them a musical curve ball, his "Classical" symphony, written in a Haydnesque style. He called it "a challenge to tease the geese." David Robertson leads the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Prokofiev's First Symphony, in concert at the iconic Opera House in Sydney, Australia.