Performance Today®

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.

Scientists tell us life on earth evolved from a murky, primordial stew. Oxygen and hydrogen from the early atmosphere, iron and calcium from the bellies of exploding stars, a dusting of carbon from wayward meteors. At the dawn of the 20th century, Richard Strauss wrote an extravagant piece of music depicting the evolution of humanity, beginning in that murky darkness. We know "Also Sprach Zarathustra" for its 90-second opening. Today, we'll hear the entire half-hour-long tone poem, from a concert in London.

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.

The music world was saddened to learn of the death late last week of Romanian pianist Mihaela Ursuleasa. She was only 33, and died of an apparent brain hemorrhage. Mihaela Ursuleasa stopped by the PT studios in 2008 for music and conversation with host Fred Child. PT staffers remember her as being smart and talented and engaging. In today's show, we'll rebroadcast portions of that 2008 interview, and her performance of music by Rachmaninoff and Chopin.

In 1999, conductor Daniel Barenboim and his good friend, author Edward Said, decided to found an orchestra made of up both Israeli and Arab musicians. Lots of people said they were crazy. Others said it might lead to peace in the Middle East. Barenboim is too much of an optimist and just enough of a pessimist to believe either argument. Still, he says what it can do is open up the dialogue between the two sides of the conflict. All this week, we'll hear Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in symphonies by Beethoven, from the Proms in London.