Performance Today®

Soprano Elizabeth Zharoff can remember the exact moment she decided to become a professional musician. While she was singing in a high school competition, Zharoff saw and felt the audience lean forward anticipating her next note. Since then her star has continued to rise. Zharoff is now a master's candidate at the Curtis Institute of Music and she'll join host Fred Child all week long as Performance Today's Young Artist in Residence.

The term child prodigy gets thrown around so often in the musical world that we sometimes forget just how remarkable youthful talent can be. Felix Mendelssohn was writing music that had emotional and spiritual and intellectual depth before he even started shaving. In today's show, Vadim Repin plays Mendelssohn's first violin concerto, the product of an unparalleled 13-year-old mind.

The term child prodigy gets thrown around so often in the musical world that we sometimes forget just how remarkable youthful talent can be. Felix Mendelssohn was writing music that had emotional and spiritual and intellectual depth before he even started shaving. In today's show, Vadim Repin plays Mendelssohn's first violin concerto, the product of an unparalleled 13-year-old mind.

In Greek mythology, Prometheus took fire from the gods and gave it to mortals. We got warmth and light, knowledge and culture. But Zeus punished Prometheus by chaining him to a rock for all eternity, where a giant eagle pecked out his liver each day. In today's show, we'll hear excerpts from Beethoven's ballet, "The Creatures of Prometheus," from a concert in New York City.

A systematic assault on a mind is a hard thing to track. But photographs of Dmitri Shostakovich over the years do seem to tell a story. Into his late 20s, he kept a kind of impish Harry Potter youthfulness about him, including the owl glasses. But gradually, as the official scolding from Moscow turned into harassment and then to abuse and threats, Shostakovich changed. His face grew grim and strained. In today's show, a snapshot of the young Shostakovich, before fear became part of his daily life. We'll hear his Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 1 from Los Angeles.

Poet Rita Dove wrote a book about Beethoven, his best friend in 1803, and the piece they premiered together. Beethoven wrote an astonishing sonata inspired by the virtuosity of violinist George Bridgetower. But one night over drinks, the two friends got into a fight. Beethoven took Bridgetower's name off the music, and they never spoke again. Rita Dove has re-imagined their relationship in her book, "Sonata Mulattica." She joins PT host Fred Child to guide us through their story, and through the piece that's become known as Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata.

On this Martin Luther King Day, our show is devoted to a celebration of the life of Dr. King. Music was an important force in the civil rights movement, and important in the personal life of Dr. King as well. We'll hear highlights from the annual King Celebration concert in his home town of Atlanta last Thursday evening, including Yo-Yo Ma performing Dvorak's Cello Concerto with the Atlanta Symphony.

Johannes Brahms was experimenting. He was always attracted to the richer, darker sounds of certain instruments, the viola and the clarinet, for example. He wanted to highlight those warmer sounds in his Second Serenade for Orchestra. But what to do with all those pesky violins, with their bright, piercing sounds? Hear how Brahms solved his fiddle problem in this weekend's show. The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra plays his Second Serenade in New York.

Igor Stravinsky borrowed all of the tunes from his ballet, "Pulcinella," from Italian music of the eighteenth century. But he put his own musical fingerprints all over it. It's a delightful mix of old and new. We'll go to New York to hear a performance of the "Pulcinella" Suite by the New York Philharmonic.