Performance Today®

Soprano Jessye Norman is legendary for her operatic roles, but she grew up listening to (and loving) all kinds of music: jazz, blues, spirituals, the great American songbook. She performed recently in Berlin with a small jazz ensemble, and that concert is now a 2-CD set -- "Roots: My Life, My Music." PT host Fred Child talks with Jessye Norman about her earliest musical memories, and about the hidden meaning in spirituals. We'll sample highlights from her Berlin concert recording. And we'll hear from Norman's exquisite 1982 performance of the heartbreakingly beautiful "Four Last Songs" by Richard Strauss.

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.

Every now and then, there is a concert performance that galvanizes an audience. If you're there, you feel it happening -- you unconsciously lean forward in your seat, grip the arm rests, the hair on the back of your neck stands up. There was a concert three weeks ago in London that had that effect: the audience shouted and stomped their approval, the critics raved. The concert performance of the summer (so far!) at the 2010 Proms in London: Valery Gergiev conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in an epic performance of the Firebird, by Igor Stravinsky.

Growing up, Russian pianist Denis Matsuev had a hard time deciding between music and sports. He did both for a long time. But after two broken arms (caused by sports, not music), his dad told him it was time to choose one or the other. Lucky for us, Matsuev chose the more skeletally-friendly of the two: music. We'll hear two by Matsuev, including Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini," from the Colmar International Festival in France.

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.