Performance Today®

Benjamin Grosvenor was born in 1992 in a town just outside London. Everyone assumed that he would follow family tradition and play the piano. No one expected that he would perform in front of thousands at the BBC Proms in London. On Performance Today, we'll hear Grosvenor's second star turn at the Proms with a concerto by Camille Saint-Saens. And Brian Newhouse will preview the famous Last Night of the Proms concert he's hosting this weekend.

Conventional wisdom says that only those who start intense musical training at a very young age will succeed. But Andrew Staupe got a relatively late start on the piano. He didn't start working on it seriously until he was a teen-ager. Staupe knew he had to make up for lost time. He says, "I really super-charged myself. And I thought, I have to learn fast and learn a lot." We'll meet this fine young American pianist today in the PT studios. Music and conversation with Andrew Staupe.

When Andrew Staupe was a child he spent a lot of time onstage, not as a musician, but as an actor and dancer. One day he heard another performer playing a Chopin nocturne on a piano backstage and was transfixed. Today he's a doctoral candidate in piano performance at Rice University and a finalist in the American Pianists Association Classical Fellowship Award. Staupe joins host Fred Child in the studio to talk about life on the stage and play music by Debussy, Mendelssohn and Christopher Walczak.

American composer John Cage cut a deep swath through the musical landscape in the last century. To modernists, he was a pioneer, a revolutionary thinker. To traditionalists, he was a madman who wrote baffling music. John Cage was born 100 years ago today. We'll celebrate his centennial with a sample of some of his music, and hear how this philosopher of sound influenced those who came after him.

Innovative American composer John Cage would have celebrated his 100th birthday this year. One of his most influential pieces is called 4'33." PT host Fred Child spoke with author Kyle Gann about how this relatively short piece of music changed everything that came after it.

Johannes Brahms wasn't exactly known for writing great xylophone parts. Or any xylophone parts, for that matter. But Arnold Schoenberg apparently thought that was just what Brahms needed. He orchestrated a Brahms piano quartet, and included a juicy part for the xylophone in the last movement. And he threw out the piano part entirely. Just a couple of the "improvements" in a wild, sometimes wacky, and ultimately very satisfying makeover by Arnold Schoenberg. We'll hear it, from a concert in New York.

Technically, it doesn't happen for another couple of weeks. But for most of us, this day marks the unofficial end of summer. After today, the picnic baskets, sunscreen, and beach towels can go back in the closet. Time to start hunting for socks and scarves and anything made of flannel. We'll celebrate Labor Day today with a couple of portraits of autumn by Antonio Vivaldi and Astor Piazzolla. And an ode to the American worker, Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man."

Historically, the residents of Great Britain haven't always gotten along. Scotland and England, in particular, have a long and bloody history together. But never mind all that. There was a very friendly Scottish invasion in London recently. Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti, Scottish conductor Donald Runnicles, and the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland gave a concert at the Proms. We'll hear highlights, including Benedetti playing Max Bruch's Scottish Fantasy.

Like a seasoned antique hunter with a nose for overlooked gems, conductor JoAnn Falletta has a real knack for bringing hidden treasures to light. In today's show, Falletta leads the Buffalo Philharmonic in Franz Schreker's "Prelude to a Drama." Schreker is largely forgotten today, but was an important opera composer in the early 20th century. Schreker's "Prelude to a Drama" comes from his opera "The Marked Ones."