Performance Today®

In 1985, composer John Adams had a daughter named Emily, but he and his wife nicknamed her "Quackie." One night, Adams dreamed that Quackie was riding on the shoulder of mediaeval mystic Meister Eckhardt, and as they floated through the night sky, she whispered in the master's ear, sharing the secret of grace. That dream inspired an ethereal movement called "Meister Eckhardt and Quackie" in Adams' 1985 piece, Harmonielehre. The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra plays it, in concert at the Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam. In a similar vein, Samuel Barber was inspired by a made-up phrase in James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake." Barber's "Fadograph of a Yestern Scene" is a nostalgic look back, a wonderfully reflective and rarely played gem of American music. Our concert performance is by the Polish National Radio Symphony.

The BBC Proms is a massive summer music festival in London, with concerts every night for eight weeks at the Royal Albert Hall. We'll hear highlights from a concert this past week: 34 year-old Vasily Petrenko conducting the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic in a performance of Schumann's Manfred Overture, and the final movement from Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony. (Both works inspired by the tragic hero of Lord Byron's romantic poem, Manfred.)

"Don't laugh at me! I am ashamed, and cannot get beyond my fumbling." The words of a struggling young musician, just leaning to play an instrument? Not exactly. Those fretful sentiments were written by composer Felix Mendelssohn. In a way, he was learning to master something new: writing for the violin. He wrote that while working on his violin concerto. He managed to progress way beyond fumbling. The work is a masterpiece for violin. We'll hear a performance by Viviane Hagner, from a concert three nights ago at London's BBC Proms.

"Who cares if you miss a note or two? If you're true to the music, THAT's what matters!" So says pianist Simon Trpceski about the pressure of playing a frighteningly difficult piece in front of a concert audience of 6,000, and a broadcast audience of millions. On Monday night, Trpceski joined the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic at the BBC Proms in London, playing Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2. We'll hear how it went (he didn't miss many notes), along with a Schumann Overture and the finale of a Tchaikovsky Symphony, both inspired by Lord Byron's tragic hero, Manfred.

Felix Mendelssohn got the inspiration for his Scottish Symphony when he was 20 years old, travelling in Scotland. But, since he waited more than a dozen years to actually write the piece...is there any real connection between his inspiration and the symphony? Conductor Riccardo Chailly has been looking into it, and joins us today. Chailly talks about the fragmentary sketch Mendelssohn jotted down in Scotland. And we'll hear Chailly conduct the very orchestra Mendelssohn was leading when he wrote his symphony, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. We'll hear them play the sketch, and the full symphony, in concert in Leipzig.

Russian conductor Valery Gergiev is the only classical musician to make the 2010 "Time 100" list, Time magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Gergiev exerts his influence on orchestras and audiences alike, and there's no doubting his passion, and the depth of feeling he inspires when he conducts. We'll hear Gergiev inspiring the London Symphony Orchestra in a concert performance of "Jeux," by Claude Debussy; music for a flirtatious ballet set on a tennis court.

Conductor Simon Rattle joins us to introduce the Symphony No. 2, by Johannes Brahms. Rattle says "this is a work where real unalloyed joy comes out, and that, in all of Brahms' output, is fairly rare." Rattle also weighs in on Brahms' gruff, very German sense of humor. And we'll go to a concert in Berlin, with Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, in the complete symphony.

The great American violinist Midori joins host Fred Child for nearly a full hour of music and conversation. She and pianist Robert McDonald play the opening movement from the Violin Sonata No. 1 by Brahms, the complete Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano by Paul Hindemith, and a bon-bon by Fritz Kreisler, Syncopation. Midori opens the hour with a solo performance of the opening Adagio from the Violin Sonata in g-minor by Bach (BWV 1001). Midori will talk about the singular power of music by Bach, and about the many ways in which she is reaching out to young musicians, and young listeners.

Pianist Maurizio Pollini has been accused of being stiff and unemotional on stage. One writer said, "There are morticians who go about their duties more chirpily than Pollini on the concert platform." That may be, but he manages to coax a lot of emotion out of that wooden box of hammers and strings. He's been a beloved grand master of the piano for half a century. Pollini joins Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic for a lively - and emotional - performance of Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto.