Performance Today®

In 1957, Dmitri Shostakovich wrote a letter to a friend. "Working on a new piano concerto," he reported. "Has no artistic value whatsoever." Well...with all due respect to Shostakovich, we happen to disagree with that assessment. In today's show, Finghin Collins plays this uncharacteristically light-hearted concerto with Alan Buribayev and the RTE National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. Plus, musical settings of some of the stories from Greek mythology.

He was a relatively unknown composer, 33 years old. Getting to a point where, if you're still an unknown composer, you're likely to remain an unknown composer. But despite a slow-moving career, 1875 was a good year for Antonin Dvorak. He was newly and happily married. And there was a glimmer of hope for his career: Austria gave Dvorak a stipend based on the promise of his work, some real encouragement to continue. Over the course of about ten days in May, he wrote a lilting String Serenade. This weekend, we'll hear music by the not-yet-famous Dvorak, in concert at Carnegie Hall.

From Domenico Scarlatti's "Cat Fugue," where his cat is said to have composed the melody by walking across his harpsichord, to this week's 21st century work, part of a film score for National Geographic's "Great Migrations" series, we've got an hour of musical critters today. Plus, his teacher predicted that he was doomed to obscurity. But Anton Arensky's music still gets played fairly often. We'll hear his lovely piano trio, from a concert at the Strings Music Festival in Colorado.

Is an unfinished piece by a long-dead composer a historical artifact to be preserved as is? Or is it ripe with possibilities, waiting for someone to come along and finish in his or her own way? In 2007, an Italian composer did just that with Mendelssohn's unfinished Third Piano Concerto. We'll hear the result, from a concert in Calgary, Alberta. Roberto Prosseda solos with the Calgary Philharmonic. Plus, in honor of Veterans Day, we'll hear the story behind the famous bugle tune "Taps."

On November 10, 1910, Edward Elgar led the premiere of his Violin Concerto in London. Fritz Kreisler played violin that evening. On the 100th anniversary of that concert, we'll hear a 2010 concert performance featuring that very same violin. Nikolaj Znaider plays that amazing instrument, Mark Elder conducts the Halle Orchestra, in concert in Manchester, England.

Music always plays an important role in celebrations like weddings. In today's show, we'll hear Mozart's "Haffner" Serenade, written for the wedding of a nobleman's daughter. But classical music also proved to be indispensible at another very different sort of celebration: the 25th anniversary of a plywood factory in Jyvaskyla, Finland. The proud purveyors of plywood hired Jean Sibelius to write them a piece of music in honor of the occasion. We'll hear his "Andante Festivo," from a concert in Toronto.

We think of Beethoven as a giant, a composer who revolutionized music. We'll go back to the beginning of the Beethoven revolution: his Symphony No. 1, by a young and ambitious composer just finding his distinctive musical voice. Jaap van Zweden conducts the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, in concert at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

A rocky island, surrounded by black water, with a dark sky overhead. A boatman is rowing toward an out-cropping where, presumably, his ghostly white passenger will spend the rest of time. It's a painting by Arnold Bocklin called "The Isle of the Dead." Sergei Rachmaninoff was so taken with the painting that he wrote a tone poem called "The Isle of the Dead." In the opening moments of the piece, low strings and winds rock gently but ominously back and forth. The water lapping against the rocky shores, just as in Bocklin's painting. In today's show, Alan Buribayev leads the Brabant Orchestra in a performance, from a concert at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw.

"The Pines of Rome," by Ottorino Respighi. It's not just about the the sights and sounds of nature. Respighi wanted the ancient pines to tell the history they had seen. He wrote: "The centuries-old trees which so dominate the Roman landscape became witnesses to the events of Roman life." In today's show, ancient history uncovered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos conducts a concert performance of "The Pines of Rome."