Performance Today®

The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam is an amazing old concert hall. Beautiful, opulent, with great sight lines and spectacular acoustics. But up until a few decades ago, it was a hall with a dirty little secret. It was sinking into the surrounding mud. As the hall slowly settled into the ooze, the musicians of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra happily, unknowingly fiddled away. In today's show, the story of how engineers rescued the hall from an untimely end. And we'll hear highlights from a recent concert at the Concertgebouw.

The piano is essentially a percussion instrument. You press a key, a hammer hits the corresponding string, and a note is produced. But is that all there is? There must be more to playing the piano than that. Today, we'll hear from three terrific pianists, Vladimir Feltsman, Nelson Freire, and Garrick Ohlsson. Ohlsson weighs in on the difficulties of the piano, calling it "a box full of diminuendos." But with those three in the driver's seat, we prefer to think of it as a box full of exquisite possibilities.

Only in the world of surrealism would a ballet called "The Ox on the Roof" have absolutely nothing to do with an ox. Or a roof. French composer Darius Milhaud wrote it in 1920, just after a two-year trip to Brazil. "The Ox on the Roof" is chock-full of Brazilian melodies and rhythms and energy. We'll hear a terrific performance of Milhaud's oxless, roofless, nonsensical ballet, from a concert in Amsterdam.

For the past 75 years, the Boston Symphony Orchestra has been spending its summer seasons in the rolling hills of western Massachusetts, at the Tanglewood Music Festival. This past July, the BSO celebrated with a star-studded gala anniversary concert. PT host Fred Child was there. We'll hear highlights from that very special concert at Tanglewood, featuring cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Emanuel Ax, and the Boston Symphony.

On the afternoon of March 11, 2011, a massive earthquake hit off the northeast coast of Japan. The magnitude 9.0 quake crushed roads and buildings and unleashed a mountainous wall of sea water a dozen stories tall. In all, about 16,000 people died that day. French composer Yannick Paget has been living and working in Japan since 2004. He poured out his grief into his music, writing a solo for violin and orchestra that he calls "Tears of Sakura." We'll hear the world premiere, from a concert in Osaka, Japan.

Pianist Martha Argerich is one of those rare artists who works outside the established system. She signs no contracts, plays when and where and what she chooses, frequently cancelling performances at the last minute. And yet she inspires a reverent adoration in her many fans, who refer to her as Madame Argerich. In today's show, we'll go to a concert in Switzerland where Madame Argerich actually showed up and played a Mozart concerto.

For the past 75 years, the Boston Symphony Orchestra has been spending its summer seasons in the rolling hills of western Massachusetts, at the Tanglewood Music Festival. This past July, the BSO celebrated with a star-studded gala anniversary concert. PT host Fred Child was there. We'll hear highlights from that very special concert at Tanglewood, featuring cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Emanuel Ax, and the Boston Symphony.

We know that on at least one occasion, rock guitar legend Carlos Santana did what PT listeners do every day. He tuned his car radio to a classical music station. One of the tunes he heard that day jumped out and grabbed him, wouldn't let go. He had no idea what it was. After a little detective work and with the help of a record store clerk, Santana solved the mystery. We'll hear that tune, from Johannes Brahms' Third Symphony, and the sultry, smoky version Santana incorporated into his "Love of my Life."

Teacher and pupil both had wicked senses of humor. But the teacher always maintained a certain emotional distance in his music, more comedy and less pathos. It was the student who ventured into darker emotional corners. In today's show, a work by the student, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. His String Quartet No. 15 is almost unrelentingly dark. Mozart dedicated the work to his teacher, the sunny, funny Joseph Haydn.