Performance Today®

A certain amount of self-doubt is normal. But composer Anton Bruckner always had more than his share. He was notorious for revising his music, never being quite satisfied with the result. Finally, at the end of his life, he had a clear vision of what he wanted his Ninth Symphony to be. There was just one problem. At age 72, he was running out of time. In today's show, the story of Anton Bruckner's Ninth Symphony and a performance by the Berlin Philharmonic.

The International Chopin Piano Competition only comes around once every five years. Pianists practice for years just to earn the right to compete. Russian pianist Yulianna Avdeeva was 25 when she took home the gold medal in the 2010 Chopin Competition. Today, we'll get a chance to meet her. She plays music by Chopin and Bach in the PT studios.

Stefan Jackiw is the man Jean Sibelius wanted to be. Jackiw is immensely talented, a world-class violinist still only in his 20s. At 26, Sibelius was forced to admit that he didn't have either the talent or the nerves to make it as a violinist. Distraught, he turned to his only other option, composing. But in settling for second-best, Sibelius achieved an immortality he never would have known as a performer. Stefan Jackiw plays Sibelius' Violin Concerto in today's show, from a concert in Nashville.

In 2010, Russian pianist Yulianna Avdeeva took the music world by storm when she won the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. She's been incredibly busy ever since, playing concerts and recitals all over the world. One of her recent stops was to the PT studios. In her interview with host Fred Child, she talks about her love of Chopin, of travel, and one of the secrets to her success in Warsaw (try not to focus on the judges).

Loving parents usually try to steer their children away from making the same mistakes they did. Thankfully, children don't always listen. Vanessa Perez's mother was a pianist who suffered from terrible stage fright, who thought that the life of a musician was just too hard. So when Vanessa asked for piano lessons, her mother said no. Eventually, she gave in, and Vanessa is now enjoying the life of a concert artist that had eluded her mother. We'll meet Vanessa Perez in today's show.

Pianist Robert Levin believes in taking risks during performances. Not for his own glorification, but to deepen the level of communication between artist and audience. And for the simple fact that, in his view, to risk nothing is to achieve nothing. In today's show, Robert Levin takes risks, improvising his own cadenzas in a Mozart piano concerto, with the Nashville Symphony. Nicholas McGegan conducts.

Giacomo Puccini made it all seem so romantic in his opera, "La Boheme." But the Bohemian lifestyle that he celebrated was painfully real for some artists. Franz Schubert lived the Bohemian life in Vienna in the early 19th century, moving from garret to garret, sleeping on friends' couches, never having a place to call his own. Still, out of that poverty, Schubert wrote elegant, opulent music. We'll hear his String Quartet No. 15 in today's show, from a concert in Paris.

Ottorino Respighi wrote a trilogy of orchestral tone poems based on the sights and sounds of his beloved city of Rome. Writing about "The Pines of Rome," Respighi said, "The centuries-old trees which so dominate the Roman landscape became witnesses to the events of Roman life." In today's show, ancient history uncovered by the Cleveland Orchestra. Giancarlo Guerrero leads a concert performance of "The Pines of Rome."

Gustav Holst was a stargazer, fascinated with the nighttime wanderings of the planets. In today's show, we'll turn to Holst's greatest work, his suite called the Planets, to celebrate a rare planetary event, the Transit of Venus. Every century or so, Venus causes a tiny solar eclipse when it comes between the earth and the sun. The last one of the 21st century takes place today. Fittingly, there was another Transit of Venus in 1874, the year Gustav Holst was born.