Performance Today®

Every summer in London, the world's biggest summer music festival, the BBC Proms, gets underway. It features eight weeks of daily concerts with some of the biggest names in classical music. This year for the first time, PT is streaming every single Proms concert live on the PT home page, www.performancetoday.org. And we'll be featuring highlights from many of the performances in the show. Coming up today, highlights from opening night at the Proms, two weeks ago in London.

In today's show, a performance of a Haydn symphony that had a Viennese audience laughing out loud. We'll let you in on the joke, as Daniel Barenboim conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in Haydn's Farewell symphony. Plus, pianist Yuja Wang delivers a jaw-dropping performance of music from Stravinsky's ballet "Petrushka" in St. Paul.

Gustav Mahler's massive Fifth Symphony rages on for over an hour. But in the middle of that storm, there's a 10-minute oasis of calm. The Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth has been used for everything from funerals for heads of state to Olympic skating routines. Most people hear it as an outpouring of grief, but some say there's much more to it than that. In today's show, the story behind Mahler's Adagietto and a performance by the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

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 two terrific pianists, Shai Wosner and Garrick Ohlsson. Ohlsson weighs in on the difficulties of the piano, calling it "a box full of diminuendos." But with Ohlsson and Wosner in the driver's seat, we prefer to think of it as a box full of exquisite possibilities.

If only we could hand out those scratch-n-sniff cards to PT listeners today. It might come close to approximating what Manuel de Falla had in mind when he wrote his "Nights in the Gardens of Spain." He meant his music to evoke not just the sights and sounds of the gardens surrounding the Alhambra palace in Granada, Spain. He wanted to conjure up the delicate fragrances of the place that's been called "Paradise on Earth." If you can, find a quiet garden spot, lean back, close your eyes, and inhale de Falla's gorgeous music.

New York City's Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is militant about one thing. They have never, will never use a conductor. That philosophy undoubtedly makes for more sensitive, attentive playing, as musicians are forced to listen to and watch each other more closely. It also presents the players with unique challenges. Case in point: Aaron Copland's ballet "Appalachian Spring," with its delicate, transparent textures and lightning-fast tempo changes. The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra rises to the challenge, delivering a terrific performance of this American masterpiece.

New York City's Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is militant about one thing. They have never, will never use a conductor. That philosophy undoubtedly makes for more sensitive, attentive playing, as musicians are forced to listen to and watch each other more closely. It also presents the players with unique challenges. Case in point: Aaron Copland's ballet "Appalachian Spring," with its delicate, transparent textures and lightning-fast tempo changes. The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra rises to the challenge, delivering a terrific performance of this American masterpiece.

Is an unfinished piece by a long-dead composer a historical artifact to be preserved as is? Or is it ripe with possibilities, waiting for someone to come along and finish in his or her own way? Franz Schubert's 8th Symphony is nicknamed the Unfinished because Schubert wrote only two movements instead of the usual four. Over the years, other composers have tried their hand at completing it. Today we'll hear a new approach, the symphony as Schubert himself might have finished it, using his sketches and music borrowed from other works.

Conductor Alan Gilbert and violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann spent the past season working closely together. Zimmermann was the official Artist-in-Residence with Gilbert's band, the New York Philharmonic. Gilbert is a big fan of Zimmermann's playing. He says Zimmermann's "musicality is so intense, and his technical ability is so consummate." Zimmermann, Gilbert, and the New York Philharmonic perform Beethoven's Violin Concerto, from a concert in January.