Performance Today®

Music and fireworks have at least one thing in common. Both are fun to dabble in. But for true jaw-dropping effects, they're best left to the professionals. Both Igor Stravinsky and Claude Debussy wrote pieces that they called "Fireworks." We'll hear them in today's special 4th of July show. Plus, "Billy the Kid" by Aaron Copland, the city slicker from Brooklyn who somehow managed to capture the wide-open sounds of the American West.

Conductor Simon Rattle joins us to introduce the Symphony No. 2 by Johannes Brahms. Rattle says "this is a work where real unalloyed joy comes out, and that, in all of Brahms' output, is fairly rare." Rattle also weighs in on Brahms' gruff, very German sense of humor. And we'll go to a concert in Berlin, with Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in the complete symphony.

Call it what you like, the conductor controversy or the soloist squabble or even the Mozart mess. In today's show we'll have the story behind the cadenza kerfuffle, a disagreement between pianist Helene Grimaud and conductor Claudio Abbado that resulted in a scuttled CD project and several cancelled concerts. And we'll hear the Mozart piano concerto that started it all.

It's probably not an exaggeration to say that Johann Sebastian Bach has inspired more composers than anybody else. Plenty of people over the centuries have claimed him as their muse. In today's show, three composers use Bach as a jumping-off point. And we'll hear from the master himself, his tour de force 6-part fugue from the "Musical Offering."

How do you put together an orchestra? Usually, a select pool of applicants auditions in person, in private. In 2008 Google acquired YouTube and tried something very different. Google announced that anyone could make a video of themselves playing an orchestral instrument and upload it to YouTube. A group of music professionals and YouTube users then chose an orchestra of about a hundred players who were flown, all expenses paid, to New York City where they performed music commissioned by Google for the occasion: Tan Dun's Internet Symphony. Music for the 21st and wired Century on Friday's Performance Today.

Most composers can't wait for more people to hear their music and to recognize their name. Not Nikolai Kapustin. He doesn't talk to press, but the 74-year-old composer has conveyed one message: he has no desire to be famous. Despite his wishes, he is rapidly becoming well-known as a classically trained composer who also fell in love with jazz. On Thursday's Performance Today we'll hear Kapustin's jazz-tinged Piano Sonata No. 2 performed by Alexei Volodin in concert in Switzerland.

It's probably not an exaggeration to say that Johann Sebastian Bach has inspired more composers than anybody else. Plenty of people over the centuries have claimed him as their muse. In today's show, three composers use Bach as a jumping-off point. And we'll hear from the master himself, his tour de force 6-part fugue from the "Musical Offering."

It's always a touchy situation when the student finally eclipses the teacher. That subtle shift in dynamics that indicates the balance of power is about to flip-flop. That's what Joseph Haydn thought he saw in his rear-view mirror with his student Ignaz Pleyel, who was improving rapidly. So Haydn stepped up his game and wrote a terrific new symphony. In the end, Haydn didn't have that much to worry about with Pleyel. Today we'll hear Haydn's A-game, his Surprise Symphony, from a concert in San Francisco.

Performance Today is on the road, broadcasting from the studios of Classical New England in Boston today. In honor of our host city, we'll sample a few terrific performances by notable Boston musicians. Including composer Osvaldo Golijov and cellist Yo-Yo Ma, both Boston-area residents. They team up with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in Golijov's magical and mesmerizing "Azul." Plus, we'll hear from an innovative new chamber orchestra from Boston called A Far Cry.