Performance Today®

"This music is so expressive," pianist Simone Dinnerstein says, "it sounds as if it's about to break into song, or, in this case, 'break into text.'" She joins Fred Child in the studio to talk about musical narratives and play pieces by Bach and by Daniel Felsenfed inspired by Leonard Cohen.

Faced with a choice between life and death on her wedding night, Scheherazade spun a set of fabulous tales (1001 of them, to be exact). They kept her husband intrigued and kept his sword at bay. Composer Hector Berlioz used musical story-telling to capture the romantic attentions of a woman he loved. Two sets of urgent, life-altering tall tales are in today's show, Carl Nielsen's "Aladdin Suite" and Berlioz'"Symphonie Fantastique."

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. Play along. See if you can guess the tune and the composer.

The last applause Johannes Brahms ever heard was for his Fourth Symphony. He was dying of cancer. But he went to hear Hans Richter conduct the Vienna Philharmonic. The performance received a big ovation. We'll never know if the echo of that applause was in Brahms' ears when he died a month later. In today's show, Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic earn a big ovation for their performance of Brahms' Fourth Symphony.

"It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." Those opening lines from Dickens'"A Tale of Two Cities" are burned into almost everyone's consciousness. But what about the rest of the book? Who can quote that? In today's show, we'll have another great opening line, the sunrise from "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Everyone knows it from the film "2001: A Space Odyssey." Plus the part no one remembers, the rest of the half-hour tone poem by Richard Strauss.

Paul Jacobs is one of this country's greatest organists and for the first time ever, he plays in the PT studios. An organ? In the studio? Listen to the interview with Fred Child to find out how, and to Jacob's performance to discover the truly infinite variety of sounds and textures that are possible with this instrument.

Two of the greatest pianists of our time perform in today's show. Emmanuel Ax plays Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 22 at the Mozart Week Festival in Salzburg, Austria. And Stephen Hough (pictured) plays Rachmaninoff's First Piano Concerto in Birmingham, England. It may be Rachmaninoff's least popular concerto, but don't call it a forgotten Cinderella piece. Hough says that, for him, it's his Prince Charming concerto.

George Gershwin's "An American in Paris" is just the sort of piece that conductor Gustavo Dudamel shines at. It's jazzy, energetic, exuberant, and passionate, just like Dudamel himself. Last fall, Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic opened their season with an all-Gershwin concert, including his wide-eyed look at Paris in the 1920s. We'll hear highlights in today's show.

Last fall, the San Francisco Symphony was preparing for a concert in honor of its 100th birthday. Music director Michael Tilson Thomas searched for just the right piece to show off the talents of the orchestra. What better work, thought Tilson Thomas, than Benjamin Britten's "Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra," which showcases each instrument of the orchestra. We'll hear it, from that gala concert last September.