Performance Today®

Pianist Robert Levin believes in taking risks during performances. Not for his own glorification, but to deepen the level of communication between artist and audience. And for the simple fact that, in his view, to risk nothing is to achieve nothing. In today's show, Robert Levin takes risks, improvising his own cadenzas in a Mozart piano concerto, with the Nashville Symphony. Nicholas McGegan conducts.

For four decades, the English conductor Roger Norrington has pioneered the early music movement. Less vibrato, more contrast, more clarity, more visceral energy, all with a touch of showmanship. Roger Norrington leads the Orchestra of St. Luke's at Carnegie Hall, in the final two movements of Beethoven's 9th. Plus, we'll meet the $300,000 man: pianist Kirill Gerstein, winner of the lucrative Gilmore Artist Award.

There's plenty of gloomy talk these days about the impending death of classical music. Nay-sayers point to dwindling audiences and orchestra balance sheets awash in red ink. After today's show, you won't be able to reach any conclusion except one: the future of classical music is in very good hands. We're featuring some of the best young musicians in the world. Teen-age classical musicians in concert, including the World Youth Symphony Orchestra from the Interlochen Arts Camp.

All this week on PT, we're taking a look at some of this year's Grammy-nominated recordings, leading up to this Sunday's Grammy Awards. On today's show, highlights from new CDs by cellist Matt Haimovitz, pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin, and the Trondheim Soloists. Plus, Bruce Adolphe joins host Fred Child for an award-worthy Piano Puzzler.

Pianist Robert Levin believes in taking risks during performances. Not for his own glorification, but to deepen the level of communication between artist and audience. And for the simple fact that, in his view, to risk nothing is to achieve nothing. In today's show, Robert Levin takes risks, improvising his own cadenzas in a Mozart piano concerto, with the Nashville Symphony. Nicholas McGegan conducts.

In a hall that doesn't even feature a real pipe organ, Andrew Davis and the New York Philharmonic still managed to pull out all the stops in a performance of Camille Saint-Saens' Symphony Number 3, the Organ Symphony. Kent Tritle, the New York Philharmonic's resident organist, had to make do with an electronic instrument at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City. Plus, the best birthday present ever, Richard Wagner's "Siegfried Idyll," written as a surprise birthday present for his wife, Cosima.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic and music director Gustavo Dudamel are just wrapping up a very successful European tour, with stops in Madrid, London, Paris, and Vienna. We'll hear from their concert at London's Barbican Hall, where one critic said it was "impossible not to be swept away." Dudamel and the LA Phil play Beethoven's Seventh Symphony in London.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic and music director Gustavo Dudamel are just wrapping up a very successful European tour, with stops in Madrid, London, Paris, and Vienna. We'll hear from their concert at London's Barbican Hall, where one critic said it was "impossible not to be swept away." Dudamel and the LA Phil play Beethoven's Seventh Symphony in London.

"O Fortune, like the moon you are changeable. Life first oppresses and then soothes, as fancy takes it. Poverty and power, it melts them like ice." Those fatalistic words are the first and last ones we hear in Carl Orff's masterpiece, Carmina Burana. Along the way, the text makes a few interesting diversions, from drinking to debauchery to the pleasures of spring. We'll hear a performance from a concert in Montreal.