Performance Today®

Edward Elgar populated his Enigma Variations with loving portraits of his wife, his friends, even a bulldog named Dan. In one variation, Elgar paints a comical portrait of a bruised doggie ego: Dan tumbles down a hill, falls into a river, waddles out, shakes himself off, and barks furiously. We'll hear a performance by the Swedish Radio Symphony that careens from the comical to the touching, just as Elgar intended.

Times were tough for Mozart in the summer of 1788. His financial life was a shambles, and he was reduced to writing a series of pitiful letters to a friend, pleading for money. But at the same time, he was also writing his final three symphonies, each of them a masterpiece. He churned them out over the course of two months that summer. We'll hear Mozart's Symphony Number 39, from a concert by James Levine and the Boston Symphony.

The sea. It's where life on earth began. And by some measure, Claude Debussy's "La Mer" (the Sea) is where 20th century music began. Completed in 1905, it's an orchestral masterpiece, an amazingly complex piece of music with a disarmingly simple name. We'll hear a terrific performance by the London Symphony Orchestra and Antonio Pappano, from London's Barbican Hall.

The legendary pianist Alfred Brendel retired from the concert stage two years ago, just shy of his 78th birthday. Said he wanted to go out while he was still on top of his game. In honor of Brendel's 80th birthday this past week, we'll hear performances from his final concert tour in 2008. By the way, Brendel may have retired from giving concerts, but he's still as busy as ever giving lectures, master classes, and writing poetry.

Daniel Barenboim is the pianist when baritone Thomas Quasthoff sings Schubert songs in Berlin. Then Barenboim will conduct the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a group he formed with young musicians from several Middle Eastern countries. They'll play music of Mozart and Elgar at an historic concert in the Palestinian city of Ramallah.

It's long been known that music has the ability to help transport us out of our daily lives. It's one of the reasons so many of us listen to it. In today's show, we have a whole hour of music about other realms of being, and higher planes of existence. "Visions of Another World," by Karim Al-Zand, "Music of the Spheres," by Josef Strauss, and a Transcendental Etude by Franz Liszt. Plus an ethereal Norwegian vision of heaven from the women of Trio Mediaeval.

The legendary pianist Alfred Brendel retired from the concert stage two years ago, just shy of his 78th birthday. Said he wanted to go out while he was still on top of his game. Today, on Brendel's 80th birthday, we'll hear performances from his final concert tour in 2008. By the way, Brendel may have retired from giving concerts, but he's still as busy as ever giving lectures, master classes, and writing poetry.

The last applause Johannes Brahms ever heard was for his Symphony No. 4. He was 63 years old and terribly sick, dying of cancer. He wasn't able to get out to hear music very often. But on a Sunday evening in March, 1897, he was feeling a bit better. Brahms went to a concert in Vienna. The Vienna Philharmonic was playing his Fourth Symphony. At the end of the performance, the applause was tumultuous, and Brahms wept openly. He died only a month later. On today's show, Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony perform Brahms' Fourth, from a concert at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco.

Most classical music concerts take place inside the concert hall, essentially a glorified box. Many of those boxes are rightly revered and cherished for their history, architecture, and acoustics. But today, we'll go outside the box. Today's show features performances from unusual locations, including a barge, a night club, and a former power plant.