Performance Today®

Itzhak Perlman is one of the greatest violinists today, known all over the world. And within the Jewish community, Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot shares a similar level of respect and fame. So it's fitting that the two of them decided to make a CD together. PT host Fred Child spoke with Perlman and Helfgot recently about the project. Today, in honor of the beginning of Rosh Hashanah on Sunday, we'll hear highlights from that interview and their new CD, Eternal Echoes.

Itzhak Perlman is one of the greatest violinists today, known all over the world. And within the Jewish community, Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot shares a similar level of respect and fame. So it's fitting that the two of them decided to make a CD together. PT host Fred Child spoke with Perlman and Helfgot recently about the project. Today, in honor of the beginning of Rosh Hashanah on Sunday, we'll hear highlights from that interview and their new CD, Eternal Echoes.

Violinist Robert McDuffie talks with Fred Child about the future of music education.

In an ideal world, music would be a pure meritocracy. The most talented musicians would be the most successful. But violinist Robert McDuffie says it's not just about talent anymore. McDuffie joins Fred Child in the studio to talk about orchestras in crisis, the future job market for young musicians and how he believes we should train them. Plus, we'll hear McDuffie perform Barber's Violin Concerto with the Atlanta Symphony.

It's September, and the school year is starting up, so here's a classical quiz.

We often associate Arnold Schoenberg with crunchy, angular, atonal music. Music that's more for the head than the heart. But Schoenberg had a heart, after all. A heart with a surprising soft spot for the music of Johann Strauss, Jr., the Waltz King. In today's show, a loving arrangement of Strauss' Emperor Waltz, by Arnold Schoenberg. Plus, transformations of music by Arcangelo Corelli and the British rock band Radiohead.

The Aspen Music Festival and School in Aspen, Colorado, is many things. A terrific training ground for young musicians. A popular venue for classical all-star concerts. A place of inordinate natural beauty, nestled in the Colorado Rockies. But above all, Aspen is a place to follow one's dreams. As a young violinist, Mei-Ann Chen dreamed of being a conductor. In today's show, she leads a group with big dreams of their own, the all-student Aspen Philharmonic, in the Symphony No. 2 by Brahms.

No doubt about it: opening night of Hector Berlioz's opera Benvenuto Cellini was a spectacular disaster. Berlioz sarcastically wrote that the audience "hissed with admirable energy and unanimity." Part of the problem was the conductor, who ignored Berlioz's directions. The composer reworked the overture, renamed it and led the re-premiere himself. This time, Berlioz sent a note to the first conductor: "THAT is how the music goes." We'll hear the Roman Carnival Overture the way Berlioz intended it, on Monday's Performance Today.

Composer Aaron Copland was a city slicker from Brooklyn, New York. And yet he instinctively knew how to capture the sound of the great open spaces of the American West. Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony play highlights from Copland's cowboy ballet, Billy the Kid, in a special gala concert in honor of the orchestra's 100th anniversary.