Performance Today®

This week, we welcome all our new listeners in Houston. PT is now being carried by KUHA in Houston. In today's show, we'll feature great performances by Hans Graf and the Houston Symphony and Da Camera of Houston, representing just a part of the vibrant arts scene in the nation's fourth-largest city.

Yesterday, we brought you Part I of Mahler's 8th Symphony, known as the Symphony of a Thousand. Today is the conclusion. Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas leads the massed forces of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, the Pacific Boychoir, and the San Francisco Girls Chorus. MTT calls the work an "allegory of the distressed soul finding its way through trials to...blessedness."

Gustav Mahler's monumental Symphony Number 8 (the Symphony of a Thousand) is ambitious in almost every way. Not just its size (intended for an amassed orchestra and chorus of 1,000 people), but in its emotional and intellectual content. Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony have just completed a massive recording project, recording all of the Mahler symphonies. MTT and San Francisco perform part one of the Symphony of a Thousand in today's show. Look for part two tomorrow.

It's an ancient, simple story of boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy loses girl when she is abducted by pirates. Boy gets girl back, thanks to the intervention of a deity who is half-man and half-goat. OK, maybe the story of Daphnis and Chloe isn't so simple after all. But boy and girl live happily ever after in Maurice Ravel's ravishing, shimmering coming-of-age love story. The Montreal Symphony plays Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe Suite No. 2, from a concert in Montreal.

Rococo art and music are often criticized as being a little fussy and overly decorative. All frosting and no cake. But Peter Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme not only has plenty of cake, there are also vegetables and a side of beef lurking under there too. Cellist Alisa Weilerstein serves up this hearty fare, from a concert with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in New York.

Mozart wrote classy (and classical) music, but wasn't necessarily the classiest guy around. Let's just call him earthy, and leave it at that. Pianist Jonathan Biss doesn't go that far, but thinks a certain amount of irreverence is important for anyone who walks on stage to perform. "Nothing is sacred," he says. We'll hear these two irreverent souls together when Biss performs Mozart Piano Concerto No. 22 with the San Francisco Symphony.

It's an ancient, simple story of boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy loses girl when she is abducted by pirates. Boy gets girl back, thanks to the intervention of a deity who is half-man and half-goat. OK, maybe the story of Daphnis and Chloe isn't so simple after all. But boy and girl live happily ever after in Maurice Ravel's ravishing, shimmering coming-of-age love story. The Montreal Symphony plays Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe Suite No. 2, from a concert in Montreal.

It's hard to think of two more opposite characters in classical music than Dmitri Shostakovich and Martha Argerich. Argerich, the idiosyncratic free spirit, who says what she thinks and does what she wants. And Shostakovich, whose career and even his life depended on him toeing the Soviet party line. These opposites team up in today's show, as Martha Argerich performs Shostakovich's First Piano Concerto from the Verbier Festival in Switzerland.

It was a marathon event, a chamber music concert that lasted almost 12 hours. The occasion was the 50th anniversary of the Young Concert Artists organization, a group devoted to launching the careers of outstanding young musicians. We'll hear highlights from that super-sized concert that featured nearly 100 past and present YCA artists. Plus, Michael Tilson Thomas leads the San Francisco Symphony in Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, the Eroica.