Performance Today®

The legend of the firebird comes down to us from many different cultures. The details differ, but the essence of the story is the same. This magical bird is immortal, dying in fire and being reborn in the ashes of its former self. In 1910, the then-unknown Igor Stravinsky ensured his own immortality, writing music for the new ballet, "The Firebird." We'll hear a performance of the complete ballet from Germany, Alan Gilbert leading the Berlin Philharmonic.

Times are tough, but that's not why Christian Zacharias can often be found wearing two hats, as pianist and conductor. It's not about tightening his belt. It's about loosening the lines of communication between soloist and orchestra. In today's show, Zacharias plays and conducts what he describes as "big-scale chamber music," Chopin's Second Piano Concerto, with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

Camille Saint-Saens hated the cold, damp, raw Paris winters. So every year, he packed his valise and headed off to another exotic locale. His Piano Concerto No. 5 came out of a winter trip to Egypt. German Max Bruch was more of a homebody. Rather than going all the way to Scotland, he lifted a handful of Scottish tunes from a library book in Munich, and wove them into his Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra. In today's show, two examples of the art of travel, in performances by pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet and violinist Julia Fischer.

Edvard Grieg wrote one of the best opening lines in all of classical music in his Piano Concerto in A Minor. And like the best pickup lines, we fall for it every time. It has us intrigued, wanting to know more. We'll hear those dramatic, crashing chords that draw us in, and the rest of the musical conversation, from a concert in Montreal.

Like Dr. Frankenstein, Paul Hindemith took a few used parts from a long-dead composer and electrified them into something huge and powerful. The unwitting donor? That would be Carl Maria von Weber. His charming little tunes and marches served as the raw material for today's monster with a heart of gold, Hindemith's "Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber." We'll hear it from a concert in Los Angeles.

In today's show, two composers who looked back to earlier forms and came up with startlingly different interpretations. Sergei Rachmaninoff (pictured) took a complicated little violin melody by Paganini and turned it into a triumphant Romantic barnburner for piano and orchestra. And Maurice Ravel saw the unraveling of European society in the form of the Viennese waltz. We'll hear Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini" and Maurice Ravel's "La Valse."

Gioachino Rossini was born on this day in 1792, which makes today his 53rd birthday. If the math doesn't quite work out, it's because Rossini was born on Leap Day, a day that happens only once every four years. We'll pay tribute to the man with the elusive birthday, including a spectacular performance of Rossini arias by tenor Juan Diego Florez.

Management theory experts call it centralized management. Political historians might unflatteringly call it a dictatorship. Musicians simply use the word conductor. There are advantages to having a centralized authority figure, but the members of the always conductorless Orpheus Chamber Orchestra like to look at the flip side. They're empowered to make more musical decisions themselves. Everyone is an equal. And they all have to know the music inside and out. We'll hear the decentralized Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in Beethoven's Second Symphony.

Carl Nielsen wrote his fourth symphony amidst the horror and destruction of the First World War. But he believed so fervently in the power to survive, that he gave his symphony the title "Inextinguishable." We'll hear a performance by the inextinguishable Nashville Symphony. Their concert hall was nearly destroyed in a devastating flood that hit Nashville in 2010. This concert took place right after Schermerhorn Symphony Center reopened, after eight months of repairs.