Performance Today®

In today's show, two stories of inspiration - one sweet, one sinister. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma appeared on Sesame Street in the late 1980s, expertly accompanied by a trio of honkers and dingers. Three-year-old Matthew Zalkind was watching, and fell in love with the cello right then and there. Now all grown up, he plays a Faure trio at Marlboro. And Igor Stravinsky's frightening run-in with a gang of Nazi thugs in 1932 fueled the dark emotions of his Symphony in Three Movements. We'll hear a performance by the New York Philharmonic.

The city of Cleveland may be a diamond in the rough, but there's nothing rough about the music scene there. The Cleveland Orchestra is consistently acclaimed as one of the best orchestras in the world. Apollo's Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, gives lively and inventive early music performances. And ChamberFest Cleveland just finished its inaugural season with a bang. Join us for today's show, a celebration of Cleveland.

Like many watershed moments, the one that happened to pianist Simone Dinnerstein was painful and life-altering. She calls it her "nightmare performance," one where she suffered a serious memory lapse. It caused her to re-evaluate everything about how she plays, how she practices, how she learns music. In today's show, Dinnerstein shares how she got back on track after that, and plays a Beethoven Piano Concerto in Copenhagen.

British pianist Imogen Cooper is known for the beauty and emotional depth of her playing. She's especially admired for her interpretations of Schubert, Beethoven, and Mozart. In today's show, she plays Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23, in concert in Newcastle, England. Bright and sunny outer movements shelter a wonderfully dark, tragic slow movement at its core. Cooper gives both darkness and light their due, in a performance with Thomas Zehetmair and the Northern Sinfonia.

For centuries, composers have written music for plays. For ballet productions. In the last century, for film scores. And now, more and more composers are writing music for video games. Emily Reese is the writer and host of Top Score, a podcast about video game music. Emily joins host Fred Child today to talk about what's new in music for gamers.

By any measure, Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland is one of the great American works of art. But in 1944, Copland was paid 500 dollars for writing it. Not much for a future classic. But looking back, Copland said, "they needn't have worried about the amount. Five hundred dollars seemed like a lot to me in those days." On Friday's Performance Today, we'll hear the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra play 500 dollars worth of music by Aaron Copland.

For centuries, composers have written music for plays. For ballet productions. In the last century, for film scores. And now, more and more composers are writing music for video games. Emily Reese is the writer and host of Top Score, a podcast about video game music. Emily joins host Fred Child today to talk about what's new in music for gamers.

Top Score podcast host Emily Reese talks about the latest in music composed for video games.

Carter Pann's Mercury Concerto is a celebration of love and friendship. Friendship between composer Pann and flutist Christina Jennings, who premiered the piece. And love between Jennings and her husband, violist Matthew Dane. In today's show, we'll hear the world premiere of Pann's Mercury Concerto, a showcase for the flute, with a few shining moments for the viola as well.