Performance Today®

Is it a stupendous work of art, a shameless piece of self-promotion, or a mockery of the music business? Maybe it's all three. "Ein Heldenleben,""A Hero's Life," by (and about) Richard Strauss. Strauss told a friend "I don't see why I shouldn't write a symphony about myself, I find myself as interesting as Napoleon." Whether you take the grandiose plot seriously, or see it as Strauss poking fun at his critics, it's an astonishing and entertaining piece. Bernard Haitink conducts the Chicago Symphony, in concert at Orchestra Hall in downtown Chicago.

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 concert performance with the Cleveland Orchestra. Plus two concerts in Vienna: Lang Lang plays Chopin's "Aeolian Harp" Etude in the sumptuous acoustics of the Golden Hall at the Musikverein, and Yefim Bronfman plays the Paganini Etude No. 2 by Franz Liszt, at the outdoor gardens of Schonbrunn Palace.

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."

Among all the larger-than-life personalities in the music world, pianist Tzimon Barto just might be the largest. A body-builder who could probably bench-press the grand piano he plays on. Fluent in seven languages. Writes novels and poetry. A true original, we'll hear him playing music by another original - George Gershwin. The show is filled with great American music in honor of this most American of holidays.

Their names come from Roman mythology. The ancients called them wandering stars, and assigned each its own personality. One is the bringer of war, while another brings peace. One is jolly and benevolent. Its neighbor is remote and mystical. Gustav Holst poured his passion for astrology into his greatest work, his orchestral suite called "The Planets." We'll hear a performance by Peter Oundjian and the Toronto Symphony.

The 2011 Tchaikovsky Competition wrapped up in Moscow yesterday. The competition, held every four years since it started in 1958, has a history of controversy. This year was no different. The story of one player escorted off the stage by security guards, another being insulted by a conductor during a recital, and a performance by one of the gold-medal winners, cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan, all in today's show.

Violinist Nikolaj Znaider thinks that passion repressed is more interesting than passion expressed. He hears both in the violin concerto by Johannes Brahms. Znaider says we should look to the young Brahms - handsome, confident, defiant - when we hear the concerto. Znaider channels the passion of Brahms in a performance with the Cleveland Orchestra.

Kirill Gerstein is the most recent winner of the Gilmore Artist Award, the most lucrative award for classical pianists. Handed out once every four years, it comes with a $300,000 prize. Perhaps a bit surprising for someone who started out as a jazz pianist. In today's show, Gerstein talks about how he decided to focus on classical music, and admits that he still wonders if he did the right thing in giving up jazz. Gerstein plays Rachmaninoff's First Piano Concerto in San Francisco.

Mozart hadn't quite arrived when he wrote his Symphony Number 34. He was still living in his home town of Salzburg, where he felt constrained and unappreciated. Franz Schubert's 9th Symphony was grander and more complex than anything he had written so far. So grand that they call it his Great Symphony now. So complex that no one could play it. In today's show, these two great symphonies, by frustrated young composers. From concerts by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony.