Performance Today®

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.

At a time when some venerable American orchestras are going under, there are interesting new groups springing up to take their place in the musical landscape. One such orchestra is called the Knights, located in New York City. They're young, talented, innovative, and driven by a sense of musical discovery. We'll hear the Knights in concert, playing Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony.

Every day on PT, we feature the best of the best of live performances from all around the world. Today is an exception, not in quality but in geography. Every performance in Wednesday's show took place right here in the U.S. From the lowlands of Florida to the Colorado Rockies, with a stopover in the PT studios in Minnesota for the Piano Puzzler, we're featuring the best of the best of the American music scene.

Violinist Joshua Bell and pianist Jeremy Denk have been musical collaborators for years. Today, they released a new CD, an album of all French Impressionist pieces. PT host Fred Child talked with Bell and Denk about the new project, and the music that Bell describes as "elegant and fun and witty." And we'll hear a concert performance of one of the tracks on the CD, Cesar Franck's A Major Violin Sonata.

The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia is the most selective school in the country. Only 4% of applicants get in. And even then, it depends on what instrument you play. Curtis only accepts enough students to fill the chairs of a symphony orchestra. In today's show, we'll hear the occupants of those highly sought-after chairs, the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, in concert in Philadelphia.

We gave composer Bruce Adolphe a well-deserved holiday break last week, but this week it's back to business as usual. Bruce is back with a brand new Piano Puzzler. Every week, we get a listener on the phone to try to guess the hidden tune and the composer whose style Bruce is imitating. Tune in to see if you can guess what's going on in this week's Piano Puzzler.

Efficiency experts would have loved Mozart. Some composers spend years, even decades, writing a single symphony. But in 1783, Mozart proved that it's possible to get the job done in just four days. We'll hear Mozart's weekend masterpiece, his Linz Symphony, from a concert by the always efficient, always conductorless Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in New York.

Violinist Leila Josefowicz is planning on cancelling a few performances in the spring. How does she know so far in advance that she won't be up to playing? It turns out it's for a very good reason. She's expecting her second child. In today's show, we'll hear Josefowicz in a recital that went on as planned. She plays the Schubert B Minor Rondo in St. Paul.