Performance Today®

Nothing against Gustav Mahler's nine symphonies, but most of them are massive, angst-ridden affairs. They ponder great questions on the meaning of life and death in ways that can be downright, well, ponderous. Which makes the smaller, lighter, tender Fourth Symphony all the more charming. We'll hear three movements from Mahler's Fourth, from a concert at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw. Plus, Johannes Brahms giving credit where credit wasn't due: his "Variations on a Theme by Haydn," which wasn't by Haydn at all.

It's too bad there's no DNA test to help determine who wrote a piece of music. In today's show, an orphaned symphonic prelude performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. Some say Anton Bruckner wrote it, no doubt about it. Others say no way. It was Gustav Mahler, no doubt about it. The fact is, there's more than enough doubt to go around. We can't definitively say who wrote it. And from that same concert in Amsterdam, a work of much more certain parentage: a flashy, brassy orchestral work called the Sinfonietta. Leos Janacek wrote it for a gymnastic society in 1926.

When flutist Emmanuel Pahud wants to play a concerto, he has a fairly large cache of great flute music to choose from. But when he performed with the Quebec Symphony this past summer, he made a somewhat surprising choice: the Violin Concerto by Aram Khachaturian. Pahud managed to pull it off in grand style. He gave a fierce performance of Khachaturian's rollicking 40-minute concerto, veering from brash rhythms to languid, jazzy melodies to charming Armenian folk tunes.

A sparkling party quartet by Carl Stamitz, and a brainy string quartet by Beethoven. We'll hear the Quartetto Colori play a Stamitz Quartet with their unusual line-up of two mandolins and two guitars, in concert in Eisenach, Germany. And Daniel Harding leads the Bavarian Radio Symphony in an orchestration of Beethoven's "Grosse Fuge."

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.