Performance Today®

Ten years ago this week, we introduced a brand new feature on our show. And the Piano Puzzler has been a huge hit with listeners ever since. Here's how it works. Every week, 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 imitating. Play along and see if you can solve this week's Piano Puzzler.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Well, according to the old joke, "Practice!" Another way to get there is to listen to today's show. We've got an hour of performances from that venerable old hall on the corner of 57th and 7th in New York City. We'll hear highlights from concerts by pianist Arcadi Volodos, mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, and conductor Georg Solti.

Violinist Mayumi Kanagawa is our latest PT Young Artist-in-Residence this season. She's also the youngest, at 17 years old. Most of her success is due to talent and hard work. But she also gives credit to her mother, who helped to shape her as a musician. In today's show, Mayumi Kanagawa talks about the role her mother has played in her musical development. And she plays the "Havanaise" by Camille Saint-Saens.

Like plenty of other great ideas, at first glance, it might leave you scratching your head a bit. Start with an old chestnut by Antonio Vivaldi, the Four Seasons. And see it through an entirely different lens, the sultry, smoky Argentinian tango. Is that really such a good idea? Well, in a word, yes! Violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg plays Astor Piazzolla's Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, from a concert in San Francisco.

One hundred years ago this weekend, 1500 men, women, and children lost their lives when the RMS Titanic went down in the North Atlantic. Musicians on board were said to have played the hymn, "Nearer my God to Thee," as the great ship was sinking. In today's show, musical memories of the Titanic, including Carl Nielsen's arrangement of "Nearer my God to Thee."

There's plenty of gloomy talk these days about the impending death of classical music. Nay-sayers point to dwindling audiences and orchestra balance sheets awash in red ink. After today's show, you won't be able to reach any conclusion except one: the future of classical music is in very good hands. We're featuring some remarkable young musicians, including Time for Three, pianist Mariangela Vacatello, and PT's newest Young Artist-in-Residence, violinist Mayumi Kanagawa, who will be in the PT studios for the next five days.

Like plenty of other great ideas, at first glance, it might leave you scratching your head a bit. Start with an old chestnut by Antonio Vivaldi, the Four Seasons. And see it through an entirely different lens, the sultry, smoky Argentinian tango. Is that really such a good idea? Well, in a word, yes! Violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg plays Astor Piazzolla's Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, from a concert in San Francisco.

Times were tough for Mozart in the summer of 1788. His financial life was a shambles, and he was reduced to writing a series of pitiful letters to a friend, pleading for money. But at the same time, he was also writing his final three symphonies, each of them a masterpiece. He churned them out over the course of two months that summer. We'll hear Mozart's Symphony Number 39, from a concert by James Levine and the Boston Symphony.

Pianist Maurizio Pollini has been accused of being stiff and unemotional on stage. One writer said, "There are morticians who go about their duties more chirpily than Pollini on the concert platform." That may be, but he manages to generate a lot of emotion in his performances. Pollini joins Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic for a lively - and emotional - performance of Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto.