Performance Today®

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.

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.

Claude Debussy once tried his hand at painting, but decided music had a much better way of depicting the glint of sunlight on water, the ever-changing undulations of the sea, and the smell of a salty mist shimmering in the air. In today's show, Esa-Pekka Salonen leads the New York Philharmonic in Debussy's masterpiece for the senses, "La Mer," or "The Sea."

Pianist Mitsuko Uchida joins PT host Fred Child to talk about Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24. She says "It is very dark, incredibly tragic," but the lilt in her voice conveys the beauty of that darkness. We'll hear her, in concert with the Cleveland Orchestra. Plus, concert performances by pianists Lang Lang and Yefim Bronfman in Vienna.