Performance Today®

The King's Singers recently joined host Fred Child in our PT studios for a special hour of music and conversation. Long-time bass Stephen Connolly describes the tight-knit group as "six voices trying to sing as one." The legendary vocal ensemble from London did just that, entertaining a small studio audience with a half dozen songs, including their signature piece, "You are the New Day."

Thirty years ago, violinist Daniel Hope was called on the carpet for a serious offense at his music school: unauthorized practicing of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. His teachers said he wasn't ready. Hope says he just couldn't help himself. Those dazzling melodies and dizzying runs: who wouldn't ache to be able to play that? These days, Hope is authorized to play whatever he wants. He'll play his childhood dream piece, the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

He's only beginning to be known in this country, but in his native Japan, 22-year-old violinist Ryu Goto is a mega-star. He appears on national advertisements for a Japanese rail company. He's been the subject of an annual TV documentary since the age of 8. In today's show, we'll hear excerpts from Ryu Goto's smashing debut concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City, where he played works by Max Bruch and Nathan Milstein.

In today's show, two composers who couldn't be more different from each other. Robert Schumann was passionate, tormented, quixotic, the personification of the Romantic temperament. Joseph Haydn, on the other hand, had a solidly Classical personality: sturdy, good-natured, humorous, dependable. We'll hear two masterpieces from both ends of the personality spectrum, from concerts in Warsaw and Berlin.

Thirty years ago, violinist Daniel Hope was called on the carpet for a serious offense at his music school: unauthorized practicing of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. His teachers said he wasn't ready. Hope says he just couldn't help himself. Those dazzling melodies and dizzying runs: who wouldn't ache to be able to play that? These days, Hope is authorized to play whatever he wants. He'll play his childhood dream piece, the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

Today we celebrate the 100th birthday of an American original, composer Alan Hovhaness. He was someone who drew his inspiration from the natural world, and from the musical traditions of the Far East. Hovhaness grew up on the east coast, but settled in the Pacific Northwest to be near his beloved mountains. In today's show, we'll hear Hovhaness' best-known work, the symphony he called "Mysterious Mountain."

No one was harder on himself than Peter Tchaikovsky. He had this to say about his first symphony: "Despite all its glaring deficiencies I have a soft spot for it, for it is a sin of my sweet youth." Take that with the big grain of salt it deserves. Tchaikovsky's First, neither glaring nor deficient, is in today's show, from a concert in Hamburg, Germany.

Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes was a larger-than-life character who created larger-than-life characters, most notably, Don Quixote. Guitarist William Kanengiser was fascinated by 16th century Spain in which men clashed swords with Moorish soldiers and windmills, real and imagined, and he began collecting music from that era. The men of the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet play music from the time of Cervantes from a live concert in South Carolina.

Igor Stravinsky borrowed all of the tunes from his ballet, "Pulcinella," from Italian music of the eighteenth century. But he put his own musical fingerprints on it. It's a delightful mix of old and new. We'll go to New York to hear a performance of the "Pulcinella" Suite by the New York Philharmonic.