Performance Today®

Death stood peering over Mozart's shoulder as he struggled to finish his Requiem Mass in 1791. Mozart was ill, and seemed to know that he was in a race against time. He wrote frenziedly. But in the end, death didn't have the patience to wait for him to finish. Mozart died at age 35, leaving it to others to complete this beautiful and tormented work. In today's show, a performance of Mozart's Requiem from a concert in Amsterdam.

It's an ancient, simple story of boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy loses girl when she is abducted by pirates. Boy gets girl back, thanks to the intervention of a deity who is half-man and half-goat. OK, maybe the story of Daphnis and Chloe isn't so simple after all. But boy and girl live happily ever after in Maurice Ravel's ravishing, shimmering coming-of-age love story. The French National Orchestra plays Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe Suite No. 2, from a concert in Paris.

This week, we've been getting to know the newest PT Young Artist-in-Residence, Alexander Malikov. He's been in the studios every day this week. In today's show, he talks about the advantages and disadvantages of working on the fortepiano, the 18th-century ancestor of the modern piano. And he plays a sonata by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.

Vienna's Musikverein is one of those spectacular old European concert halls. The walls and ceilings shimmer with real gold. And the acoustics are every bit as magnificent as the decor. We'll hear pianist Lang Lang in a recital at the Musikverein, playing Beethoven's "Appassionata" Sonata. Plus, we'll hear from a special New Year's Day concert there. Daniel Barenboim and the Vienna Philharmonic rattled those golden walls and ceilings with Johann Strauss, Jr.'s "Thunder and Lightning Polka."

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.