Performance Today®

Violinist Nicola Benedetti defies conventional wisdom. When she was a finalist at the BBC Young Artist Competition, she didn't play an impressive, well-known warhorse. She chose the obscure and wildly atmospheric Violin Concerto No. 1 by Karol Szymanowski. She won. That led to a 1.7 million dollar major-label recording contract, and now at age 22, she's still playing that Szymanowski concerto. Nicola Benedetti with the Brabant Orchestra, in concert at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Also: Bruce Adolphe has a new Piano Puzzler, and this week's caller (from Lawton, Oklahoma) plays his piano right back at Bruce, over the phone.

Composer Igor Stravinsky and fashion designer Coco Chanel. They knew each other in Paris in the 1920s, they even worked together. Did they also have a torrid affair? A new movie says they did...we may never know for sure. We'll hear from a project they shared, the ballet "Apollo." He wrote music, she designed costumes. Highlights from Stravinsky's music on the way from a concert at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Neeme Jarvi conducting the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Hague.

All this week, we're featuring terrific women violinists in concerto performances. Today's soloist is Dutch violinist Janine Jansen, playing the Dvorak concerto in Australia. And for those suffering from cabin fever, we've got a cure. Some musical vacations are on the way, from downhill skiing, to a vacation on the Italian Riviera, to a stop at a fashionable French cafe.

Conductor JoAnn Falletta is unusually good at bringing hidden treasure to light. Recently, she unearthed a beautiful symphony by Marcel Tyberg, a victim of the Nazi concentration camps. On today's show, we hear a rarely-heard work, Joseph Marx's "Symphonic Night Music," performed by JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic. Also, part three of our "Music That Matters" feature on the Reverie Harp.

Conductor JoAnn Falletta is unusually good at bringing hidden treasure to light. Recently, she unearthed a beautiful symphony by Marcel Tyberg, a victim of the Nazi concentration camps. On today's show, we hear a rarely-heard work, Joseph Marx's "Symphonic Night Music," performed by JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic. Also, part three of our "Music That Matters" feature on the Reverie Harp.

Part two of our series "Music That Matters" takes us to a patient recovering from a stroke, playing the "Reverie Harp" helps her regain motion in her arm and shoulder. Plus: from a special 80th birthday party for conductor Bernard Haitink in Amsterdam, we'll hear Haitink conduct the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in a performance of "La Mer," by Claude Debussy. And PT's Artists-in-Residence, the Parker Quartet, return to play the opening movement of Bartok's String Quartet No. 1, and to talk about Bartok's inspiration: he was madly in love with a violinist who didn't love him back.

The debut of a new PT series: "Music That Matters." Every day, Performance Today showcases the world's great musicians in concert, and we learn how music matters to musicians. We got to wondering about people, places and communities where music is not just important...it's life-changing. "Music That Matters" will be a monthly series on PT from now through June. Our series opens with a look at an unusual instrument designed for people facing the end of life: the "Reverie Harp." In part one, we'll meet the man who created the harp, get to know how it feels and sounds, and hear the harp in action.

Giuseppe Verdi's only string quartet was inspired...by boredom. His lead soprano got sick during rehearsals for an 1873 production of Aida. Verdi spent a month in his hotel room, and killed time by writing the only quartet he ever attempted. He later told a friend "I don't know if my quartet is beautiful or ugly, but I know it's a quartet." (C'mon, it's Verdi! Which means it's full of sweeping drama and lyrical singing lines.) Plus PT listeners' calls and comments on Fred Child's interview with Philip Glass, and on new music by David Lang.

August, 1942. The German Army had been laying siege to the Russian city of Leningrad for a year. Nearly 800,000 civilians had died. But on a warm evening, sick and starving musicians gathered for a musical act of defiance: a performance of the new "Leningrad" Symphony, by Dmitri Shostakovich, broadcast via loudspeakers to the Germans outside the city. Music of bravery and resolve -- we'll hear the Cleveland Orchestra give a stirring performance of the final movement, from their residency in Miami. And we'll hear from Shostakovich's broadcast on Radio Leningrad, telling his fellow citizens to defend their city.