American Public Media’s Performance Today® is America’s most popular classical music radio program and a winner of the 2014 Gabriel Award for artistic achievement. The show is broadcast on hundreds of public radio stations across the country, including at 1 p.m. central weekdays on Minnesota Public Radio. More information about our stations can be found at APM Distribution.
On Wednesday's Performance Today: new takes on older music. Ralph Vaughan Williams found inspiration from Elizabethan English music of the 1500's. We'll hear a Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis performed at the Prague Castle. Plus, Arnold Schoenberg loved the music of Brahms, but disliked the instrumentation of the piano quartet. Michael Tilson Thomas conducts the reorchestration by Schoenerg. On Performance Today, from APM.
Maurice Ravel's string quartet was mostly dismissed as a failure by his teacher, by a prestigious contest and by music critics in Paris. But ever since Claude Debussy gave an enthusiastic thumbs up, Ravel's one and only string quartet has become a staple of the chamber music repertoire. Also we hear a double piano concerto by J.S. Bach that would have been played in a busy, bustling coffeehouse in Leipzig. On Tuesday's Performance Today.
Maybe it's not as popular as Beethoven "Ode to Joy," but Anton Bruckner's towering 8th Symphony does fall among music's greatest symphonic works. We'll hear the last movement performed in Dallas, Texas. And, as a preview of our upcoming young artist in residence series this year, we sample a highlight from last season with violinist Xiang Yu playing the Bach Chaconne. On Monday's Performance Today, from APM.
Pianist Simone Dinnerstein introduces us to a new piece for based on music by songwriter Leonard Cohen. Also, composer Timo Andres discusses his recomposition of Mozart's Coronation Concerto and why we shouldn't always put all composers up on a marble pedestal. This weekend on Performance Today from APM.
When composer and pianist Timo Andres saw a partially incomplete piano score part by Mozart, he jumped at an opportunity. He discusses his own recomposition of Mozart's Coronation Concerto and why we shouldn't always put composers up on a marble pedestal. And for the Rosh Hashanah Holiday, a 21st century concerto for Shofar, Trombone and Orchestra.
Of all the great composers, Tchaikovsky may have been the biggest curmudgeon to his fellow composers, including Bach, Brahms and Strauss. But he loved Mozart's music so much he wrote an orchestra suite as a tribute: the "Mozartiana." We also hear Nigel Kennedy performing Vivaldi at the 2013 BBC Proms, and we field PT listener comments over his controversial comments on stage. On Thursday's Performance Today, from APM.
The sonorous call of the Shofar, a ram's horn, is especially significant for the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. We recognize the start of the high holiday with a performance of Ernst Bloch's Hebraic Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra, which imitates the booming sound of the Shofar. We have this week's Piano Puzzler, plus music from Scandinavia, on Wednesday's Performance Today.
Simone Dinnerstein talks about the enduring appeal of songs by Leonard Cohen. She'll introduce us to a new piece for piano based on Cohen's music. Plus we hear from star violinist Leonidas Kavakos on a rarely performed Szymanowski concerto, on Tuesday's Performance Today.
In the mid-1500s, astronomer Nicholas Copernicus came up with a radical theory. The idea that the planets go around the sun, not around the earth. The annual summer music festival in Lugano, Switzerland has something similar. There, things don't revolve around a sun, but around Martha Argerich. We'll visit the Martha Argerich Project, a month-long festival where young, up-and-coming players get to rehearse and perform with the living legend of the piano, on Monday's Performance Today.
