Performance Today®

Three days ago, Fred Child hosted a very special onstage event at the Aspen Festival. Music and conversation with some Aspen all-stars, including Aspen music director Robert Spano, composer John Harbison, and 9-year-old Aspen student Elizabeth Aoki. Today and tomorrow, we'll bring you highlights from that special night at Aspen. Plus, violinist Gil Shaham talks about his lifelong association with the festival.

As a young man, composer John Harbison was passionate about both jazz and classical music. At the time, he felt he had to choose between the two, and picked classical. Times have changed, and nowadays he's comfortable combining the two in his music. Hear Fred Child's onstage interview with John Harbison at the 2012 Aspen Festival, along with Harbison's performance of his own music.

Robert Spano is Music Director at the Aspen Music Festival and School. He and violinist Robert McDuffie teamed up for a beautiful Brahms adagio as part of a very special event at Aspen, billed as an Evening with Performance Today and Fred Child. Music and conversation with McDuffie and Spano, including tales of McDuffie's teenage pranks when he was a student at Aspen.

There are about 600 students at the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado. For eight weeks, their schedules are jam-packed with lessons, classes, rehearsals, and concerts. But even so, many of the Aspen students find time for busking, performing as street musicians in and around Aspen. Today, we'll meet a few and hear what may be the most talented crop of buskers in the world.

They call it a tent, but it's really much more than that. It has a solid roof, and can seat nearly 2,000 people. But it's the movable side panels that make the Benedict Music Tent such a favorite of Aspen concertgoers. When the weather is nice, those panels open up and allow the gorgeous sounds to waft out over the lawn. You can bring a picnic, bring the kids, even the family dog. Today, we'll meet some folks on the lawn outside the Benedict Tent, and hear highlights from the great concerts inside.

Romanian pianist Ursuleasa died recently. She was just 33 years old. In 2008, Ursuleasa joined host Fred Child for an engaging conversation and performed music by Chopin and Rachmaninoff.

Summer is winding down in the Rocky Mountains. The wildflowers are just beginning to fade. But there is still one more week of great music at the 2012 Aspen Festival. PT host Fred Child is there. All week, we'll feature compelling interviews and terrific performances from a mile and a half above sea level at the Aspen Festival.

Every week on our Piano Puzzler, composer Bruce Adolphe re-writes a familiar tune in the style of a classical composer. We get one of our listeners on the phone to try to guess the tune and the composer Bruce is mimicking. Today's very special contestant is Alan Fletcher, president and CEO of the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado. Tune in to see if he managed to decipher this week's Piano Puzzler.

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.