Performance Today®

The Master General of the Ordnance told the Comptroller of His Majesty's Fireworks in 1749, that "the King objected to there being any musick, but when I told him the quantity and number of (trumpets and drums) martial musick there was to be, he was better satisfied, and said he hoped there would be no fiddles." George Frideric Handel got wind of that, and left the fiddles out of his Royal Fireworks Music. The Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor Herbert Blomstedt give a performance, in honor of the 4th of July holiday.

The Master General of the Ordnance told the Comptroller of His Majesty's Fireworks in 1749, that "the King objected to there being any musick, but when I told him the quantity and number of (trumpets and drums) martial musick there was to be, he was better satisfied, and said he hoped there would be no fiddles." George Frideric Handel got wind of that, and left the fiddles out of his Royal Fireworks Music. The Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor Herbert Blomstedt give a performance, in honor of the 4th of July holiday.

Pianist Louis Lortie says he always prefers live performances to studio recordings. He says, "There's a spirit, an immediacy that you just don't get in the studio." Louis Lortie plays Beethoven's first piano concerto with spirit and immediacy, along with Kurt Masur and the Cleveland Orchestra. The performance was from the Cleveland Orchestra's annual winter residency in Miami. Plus, hour one is an all-Nordic hour.

Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring" is such a perfect marriage of music and theme that he must have had the name in mind all the while he was writing it. Right? Wrong. Turns out, Copland attached a name to the ballet only at the last minute. We'll hear Copland himself tell the story, from a 1980 interview. The Swiss Italian Orchestra gives a performance of Copland's greatest hit, in concert in Lugano, Switzerland.

Hour one features two musical punctuations. Richard Strauss' opera, "Capriccio," asks which is more moving - poetry or music? It ends with a question mark, leaving the audience wondering which of two suitors a woman will choose: the poet or the composer. And Wilhelm Stenhammar tacked a big exclamation point onto the title of his jubilant "Excelsior!" In hour two, music based on the works of William Shakespeare: Henry Purcell's "The Fairy Queen" and Erich Korngold's "Much Ado About Nothing."

Is it a stupendous work of art, a shameless piece of self-promotion, or a mockery of the music business? Maybe it's all three. "Ein Heldenleben,""A Hero's Life," by (and about) Richard Strauss. Strauss told a friend "I don't see why I shouldn't write a symphony about myself, I find myself as interesting as Napoleon." Whether you take the grandiose plot seriously, or see it as Strauss poking fun at his critics, it's an astonishing and entertaining piece. Bernard Haitink conducts the Chicago Symphony, in concert at Orchestra Hall in downtown Chicago.

A pair of concert performances on the way from the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Hall, the gleaming stainless-steel concert hall on top of the hill in downtown Los Angeles. Leonard Slatkin leads Tchaikovsky's gloriously romantic "Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture," and Robert Spano conducts a bold and brassy performance of Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 3. And Bruce Adolphe joins Fred Child and a PT listener for this week's Piano Puzzler.

England's Queen Victoria was a trend-setter in everything from fashion to manners to holiday customs. So when her daughter walked down the aisle to Mendelssohn's Wedding March, suddenly everyone started doing the same. We'll hear that trend-setting music, from a concert in Montreal. Igor Stravinsky was all about bucking trends, not setting them. He even defied his own trends, often changing his musical styles. Valery Gergiev leads the London Symphony Orchestra in a performance of his Symphony in C. Plus, cellist Natalie Clein fills in for an ailing Truls Mork on Elgar's Cello Concerto.

When music critic Alex Ross once tried to describe pianist Martha Argerich's playing, he bemoaned that his "well of superlatives had run dry." Argerich has been getting rave reviews, and exhausting everyone's supply of musical superlatives, since 1965. That was the year she took the world by storm, winning the Chopin Competition. We'll spend the bulk of hour one as Argerich devotees, focusing on her spectacular solo performances and collaborations with other artists. Plus, Rolf Lislevand on improvisation, and listener calls and emails.