Performance Today®

Composer Bruce Adolphe (pictured) joins PT host Fred Child with this week's Piano Puzzler. Bruce re-writes a familiar tune in the style of a classical composer. Play along as a PT listener tries to name the composer whose style Bruce is mimicking, and the hidden tune. Plus, a full hour of music inspired by castles, and recent concerts that took place inside castles. A castle-inspired symphonic poem by Arnold Bax, the Tokyo Quartet and Leif Ove Andsnes in concert at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, and Vivaldi's "Summer" in concert at the Castello di Amorosa (the "Castle of Love") in Napa Valley, California.

The 2010 Proms in London had an all-Bach day this month. We'll hear two very different highlights: a sizzling performance of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 from conductor John Eliot Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists, featuring some stellar trumpet work by Neil Brough. And the world premiere of a new piece inspired by Bach, "Latent Manifest" by Tarik O'Regan. O'Regan says he followed the "implications" of the "intimations" in the slow movement of the Solo Violin Sonata No. 3 by Bach. Andrew Litton leads the world premiere performance by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

April 21, 1915, Jean Sibelius wrote in his diary: "This morning I saw 16 swans. One of my greatest experiences! ...They circled over me, then disappeared in the solar haze like a gleaming silver ribbon...nature's mystery, and life's melancholy." That flight of swans inspired the expansive theme that returns over and over in the final section of the Symphony No. 5 by Sibelius. Conductor Thomas Dausgaard talks about the "sheer ecstasy" Sibelius felt that morning, and Dausgaard leads the Danish National Symphony Orchestra in Sibelius' Symphony No. 5, from a concert this month at the BBC Proms in London.

Two great young cellists are in the show today. Daniel Mueller-Schott plays a Saint-Saens concerto with the Luxembourg Philharmonic, and Joshua Roman plays the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations at the Bellingham Festival in Washington. Plus, a pair of fascinating Bach transcriptions, from Bach day at the BBC Proms in London.

Conductors who lead the Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 by J.S. Bach generally aim for an amiable blend between the horns and the rest of the ensemble. And then...there's John Eliot Gardiner. When he led the English Baroque soloists at the 2010 Proms in London, he emphasized the difference between the elegant, aristocratic strings and the throaty, rustic sound of the natural horns. It made for a bracing performance -- combining courtly dignity and barnyard slapstick. That entertaining concert was last week at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Pianist Garrick Ohlsson says that whenever he announces a Chopin nocturne as an encore, there's always a collective swoon in the audience, "aaahhhhh." Ohlsson will make us swoon with two by Chopin: a nocturne and a scherzo, from a concert at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival in Massachusetts. Plus, you may have heard a number of Haydn symphonies (he wrote 104 of them). Today, we'll hear how it all began, when the Neuss Chamber Orchestra performs Haydn's Symphony No. 1.

Two great young cellists are in the show today. Daniel Mueller-Schott plays a Saint-Saens concerto with the Luxembourg Philharmonic, and Joshua Roman plays the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations at the Bellingham Festival in Washington. Plus, a pair of fascinating Bach transcriptions, from Bach day at the BBC Proms in London.

Most people have never heard of Canadian composer Andre Mathieu. Mathieu was a rising star in the 1930s and 1940s. But he led a troubled life, dropped out of the music scene, and died in obscurity in 1968. Some call him the Canadian Mozart, although his style is closer to Rachmaninoff, who called Mathieu a genius. On today's show, Alain Lefevre performs Mathieu's fourth piano concerto with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra.

America was a haven for composers fleeing persecution in Europe just prior to World War II. In today's show, we feature several composers living in exile in the United States in the last century. A number of them went to work in the film industry in Hollywood, including Erich Korngold. Korngold, an Austrian Jew, was working on the music to the film "Robin Hood" when conditions at home deteriorated rapidly, making it impossible for him to return to Vienna. Korngold credits "Robin Hood" with saving his life. We'll hear Korngold's expansive and romantic violin concerto, in a performance by violinist Leonidas Kavakos at the BBC Proms two weeks ago in London.