Performance Today®

Performance Today comes to you from the Virginia Arts Festival today and Monday. The VAF is a six-week celebration of arts and culture centered in and around Norfolk, Virginia. Host Fred Child is there, broadcasting from the studios of WHRO in Williamsburg. On today's show, we'll hear a recent VAF performance by the Orion String Quartet, playing Beethoven and Bach.

Composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was fed up with people trying to attach hidden meanings to his music. When one critic tried calling Vaughan Williams' sixth symphony his "War Symphony," the composer had enough. He sniffed, "It never seems to occur to people that a man might just want to write a piece of music." We'll have that music-without-a-deeper-meaning, the sixth symphony, in today's show. Jaap Van Zweden leads the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, in concert in Amsterdam.

The book of Genesis tells the story of God creating order and beauty out of chaos and darkness. Today's show starts with some astonishing music for its time. In 1738, Jean-Fery Rebel depicted that primordial chaos in his ballet, "Les Elemens" ("The Elements"). It's wild and discordant, but quickly turns into a charming set of dances. We'll hear the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, in concert in Germany. Plus, Bruce Adolphe returns with the Piano Puzzler.

In 1938, composer Paul Hindemith fled Nazi Germany and later came to the U.S. One of his first projects here was to write a ballet based on themes by Carl Maria von Weber. Weber's tunes were charming but insubstantial. But Hindemith took that music of limited possibilities and turned it into something spectacular. His "Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Weber" is in today's show, performed by the Norwegian Radio Orchestra.

What happens when an orchestra known for a big, intense sound is launching a new organ in its home hall? They play a piece on which the organ' sound is as big as the orchestra's. Olivier Latry joins conductor Christoph Eschenbach and the Philadelphia Orchestra for Saint-Saens' large-scale masterwork at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia.

Every artistic movement has a life span, like a living thing. From its boisterous, rebellious youth, to its conservative middle-age, to its waning old age, we'll trace the evolution of Romanticism in music. Pretty much everyone agrees it all started with a guy named Beethoven, great at bending and even breaking musical rules. We'll feature music of Beethoven, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, and Englishman Gerald Finzi.

Two giant turbines loom large on the stage. Black iron hooks and chains dangle from the ceiling. No, it's not a medieval torture chamber. It's a concert venue, although an admittedly unusual one. It's the Heimbach Power plant in Germany, site of the Spannungen Chamber Music Festival. We'll hear a Dvorak piano quintet from Heimbach today on PT.

Ever since Dmitri Shostakovich premiered his fifth symphony in 1937, critics and musicians have been arguing over what it means. The work is powerful; no one disputes that. But is it power that defies authority, or celebrates it? That's the sticking point. You can hear the final two movements on today's show and decide for yourself. Yuri Temirkanov leads the St. Petersburg Philharmonic of Russia, in concert in Birmingham, England.

An hour of folk-flavored fare reaches a climax with a fiery performance of the Dvorak Cello Concerto. At a concert at Budapest's Palace of Arts, Pieter Wispelwey performs one of the great works for his instrument, in the company of conductor Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. And Bruce Adolphe has the week off, so no Piano Puzzler today. Bruce will be back with a new Puzzler next week.