Performance Today®

A full performance of Wagner's opera Tristan and Isolde spans about five hours. Pick out the first and last bits, scoop out everything in the middle, and you've got a nice concert excerpt that's a manageable size. In today's show, Jaap van Zweden does just that, leading the Dallas Symphony in the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner's opera. Plus, highlights from PT's week at the 2011 Aspen Music Festival.

A full performance of Wagner's opera Tristan and Isolde spans about five hours. Pick out the first and last bits, scoop out everything in the middle, and you've got a nice concert excerpt that's a manageable size. In today's show, Jaap van Zweden does just that, leading the Dallas Symphony in the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner's opera. Plus, Elgar's loving portraits of family and friends: his Enigma Variations from the BBC Proms in London.

When Gustavo Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela made their BBC Proms debut in 2007, they blew the roof off the Royal Albert Hall in London with a program of Latin music. They came back to the Proms this year, a little more mature (they no longer call themselves a youth orchestra). But the SBSO can still pack a punch. We'll hear their sold-out performance of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, from a concert three weeks ago in London.

Violinist Midori joined host Fred Child in our PT studios recently for an hour of music and conversation. She talked about the singular power of music by Bach ("so spiritual, so cleansing, so difficult") and about the many ways in which she is reaching out to young musicians and young listeners. Plus, Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, from a concert by the New York Philharmonic.

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.

PT has had a memorable week at the Aspen Music Festival in Aspen, Colorado. Today, host Fred Child wraps up his stay there with two on-stage perfchats, music and conversation with several Aspen artists. Edgar Meyer plays one of his own virtuoso pieces for the double bass. And 14-year-old Simone Porter, an Aspen student violinist, wows the crowd with music by Sarasate.

Violinist Joshua Bell remembers being a 15-year-old student at the Aspen Music Festival and School, and how it changed his life. He'll tell the story, and we'll hear Gil Shaham, Cho-Liang Lin, Ingrid Fliter, and others share their Aspen memories. And from the Aspen Music Festival, Joshua Bell joins the Aspen Chamber Symphony to play the Violin Concerto by Felix Mendelssohn.

Alan Fletcher is the President and CEO of the Aspen Music Festival, more than a full-time job. But more than anything else, he says he considers himself to be a composer. A composer who just happens to have a great day job running America's biggest summer music festival. In today's show, we'll hear one of Fletcher's works, "Woman Holding a Balance," based on this painting by Vermeer.

Here at PT, we call them perfchats: music and conversation with some of the top artists in classical music. In today's show, the first in a series of perfchats from the Aspen Music Festival. Pianist Steven Osborne plays music by Ravel and Prokofiev, from a special event recorded at Aspen on Monday night. Plus, the art of busking at Aspen.