Performance Today®

Today we'll meet our newest PT Young Artist-in-Residence, pianist Alexander Malikov. He's a student at Oberlin College, about ready to graduate. Oberlin is a terrific music school, but it's also a top-notch liberal arts college. Malikov shares his thoughts on getting a well-rounded education, and plays a Beethoven piano sonata in the PT studios.

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. Is it "Stand by Your Man" in the style of Tchaikovsky? Or maybe "Do Re Mi" in the style of Schoenberg? Play along, see if you can guess the tune and the composer in this week's Piano Puzzler.

In a time when women were generally expected to give up their careers when they married, Clara Schumann was an exception. She had a big international career as a pianist, was a fine composer, a mother of eight children, and the chief bread-winner in the family. On Friday's Performance Today we'll hear music by Clara Schumann, in honor of Mother's Day.

On Thursday's Performance Today, we remember violinist Roman Totenberg, who died on Tuesday. In Totenberg's marathon 90-year professional career, he worked with composers like Samuel Barber, taught hundreds of students and launched two important musical institutions: The Aspen Music Festival and Music Academy of the West. The classical music world would be a different place had it not been for Roman Totenberg. We'll honor his contribution by listening to his performance of Ernest Bloch's Violin Concerto.

George Gershwin had it all: talent, looks, charisma, spiffy art deco apartment on Riverside Drive with the grand piano, the parties, the Isamo Noguchi bust of himself. And, of course, a melodic gift that escaped the theatre and lived in memory. On Wednesday's Performance Today, we'll hear one of George Gershwin's influential forays into the concert hall, played by an equally charismatic pianist from Quebec. Alain Lefevre plays George Gershwin's Concerto in F.

In 1721, the Margrave of Brandenburg got a gift that he didn't quite know how to appreciate. Bach sent him a bound manuscript with six lively concertos for chamber orchestra. The Margrave didn't really know what to make of it, so he ignored it. Thankfully, history hasn't ignored Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. We'll hear the first of the six, on Tuesday's Performance Today from APM.

Pianist Mitsuko Uchida joins PT host Fred Child to talk about Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24. She says "It is very dark, incredibly tragic," but the lilt in her voice conveys the beauty of that darkness. We'll hear her, in concert with the Cleveland Orchestra. Plus, concert performances by pianists Lang Lang and Yefim Bronfman in Vienna.

The Roma people (also known as Gypsies) have long lived on the fringes of Eastern European society. But even though they themselves have been marginalized, their influence on classical music has not. In today's show, we'll hear Haydn's "Gypsy Rondo" Trio and the world premiere of Mark O'Connor's "March of the Gypsy Fiddler."

Every day on Performance Today, we hear great musicians in concert. How did they get to be so good? And how do they stay on top of their game? On Fridaya€™s show, we'll meet double bass player David Grossman from the New York Philharmonic. He'll tell us what it's like to live at the bottom of the orchestra, musically speaking, and wea€™ll hear him perform Mozarta€™s Sinfonia Concertante.