Performance Today®

Free MP3 downloads, video and interviews with talented violinist Xian Yu.

Conductor Harry Christophers says for him, Handel strikes every emotion in his body. At times it reduces him to tears, but most of the time it leaves him smiling like a Cheshire Cat. We'll have highlights from the Easter sections of Handel's Messiah on this weekend's Performance Today. Plus Harry Christophers talking (and grinning like a Cheshire Cat) about the music by Handel.

In all of Johann Sebastian Bach's musical output, the St. John Passion is probably the boldest experience in terms of dramatic expression. Conductor Bernard Labadie calls it a work filled with lava-like strings and brass sections that pierce like swords. We'll hear Labadie conduct the St. John Passion in a performance by Les Violins du Roy for Good Friday 2013.

One of the most meaningful concerts in the life of Josef Haydn took place in a darkened Spanish cathedral. It was music he wrote for a Good Friday service. Recently, poet Michael Dennis Browne wrote his own words to accompany Haydn's deeply thoughtful Good Friday music. "I surprised myself," he said, "just as the great Haydn surprised himself." We'll hear Haydn's "Seven Last Words of Christ," music with with new poetry by Browne, on Thursday's Performance Today.

Stephen Hough is a poet at the piano and on the page. He's also quite open about his weaknesses. Hough has written about questioning his career choice, battling ego issues, fighting his nerves, and overcoming moments when he says he fails to reach his own high standards. Nevertheless, Hough keeps trying. We'll hear this heroic pianist, from a live concert in Dallas, Texas on Wednesday's Performance Today.

Argentine composer and tango master Astor Piazzolla wrote dozens of pieces inspired by tango, but none more ethereal than the one we'll hear called Oblivion. We'll go to a concert by the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, in Houston for music by the tango master on Tuesday's Performance Today from APM.

Robert Schumann wrote a remarkable Arabesque for solo piano, but he certainly wasn't the only composer to use the title Arabesque. We'll hear Yefim Bronfman play the Schumann, in concert in New York as well as Arabesques by two other composers on Monday's Performance Today from APM.

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 whose style Bruce is mimicking. Play along, see if you can guess the tune and the composer. Today's Puzzler contestant is Shawn Hampton from Round Rock, Texas.

I'll take you back to some of the great events of classical music in the 20th century: the Carnegie Hall comeback of pianist Vladimir Horowitz, the bookends to Leonard Bernstein's career: his surprise debut and his historic finale at the Berlin Wall. And Mstislav Rostropovich going home. Great musical moments of the 20th century on Friday's Performance Today from APM.