Performance Today®

Nikolaus Harnoncourt played cello in the Vienna Symphony in the 1950s and 60s. But he was so unhappy with the way conductors told him to play Mozart symphonies, he quit the orchestra and became a conductor himself. Instead of being gentle and elegant, he felt Mozart's work should be fiery and passionate, witty and emotional. Harnoncourt joins host Fred Child to talk about his approach, and we'll go to Amsterdam to hear Harnoncourt lead the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in a fiery and emotional performance of Mozart's Symphony No. 35, the Haffner Symphony.

Some pianists approach Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto as something to be conquered by force. They make it sound every bit as difficult as it is. But Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes overcomes all those technical difficulties and gets to the heart of the piece like few others can. We'll hear a performance by Andsnes and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in Bergen, Norway.

Christoph Eschenbach is a 70 year-old conductor, originally from Germany. Lang Lang is a 27 year-old pianist, originally from China. For the last decade, Eschenbach and Lang Lang have shared a close musical friendship. Eschenbach says it's eerie, almost telepathic, how they sense each other's musical ideas. They just wrapped up an American tour with the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra. From a concert two weeks ago in San Diego, we'll hear their elegant performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 17.

The legendary early music vocal quartet Anonymous 4 joins Fred Child to talk about the simple, penetrating beauty of music from the Huelgas Codex, a 13th century manuscript discovered in a Spanish convent. Anonymous 4 talks about the remarkable history of this unique document, and sings highlights from the music. We'll also compare Tchaikovsky's bluebird melody from "Sleeping Beauty" with a real bluebird song, and hear Tchaikovsky's bird call from a concert in Bergen, Norway.

Every Wednesday, composer Bruce Adolphe joins host Fred Child and a PT listener for our Piano Puzzler. Bruce re-writes a familiar tune in the style of a classical composer, and plays his creation on the PT piano. Our listener tries to guess the hidden tune, and the composer whose style Bruce is mimicking. Play along in hour 1 of today's show! And in hour 2, enjoy a great young American ensemble, the Escher Quartet, playing Beethoven's String Quartet No. 8.

Some pianists approach Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto as something to be conquered by force. They make it sound every bit as difficult as it is. But Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes overcomes all those technical difficulties and gets to the heart of the piece like few others can. We'll hear a performance by Andsnes and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in Bergen, Norway.

By one count, at least 80 different composers have made arrangements and orchestrations of Modest Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition," a work for solo piano. That number is now up to 81, thanks to a new orchestration by Clarice Assad. We'll hear this terrific new arrangement for small orchestra, piano, and percussion, in a performance by the New Century Chamber Orchestra in Berkeley, California.

In 1924, American composer George Antheil was experimenting with jazz styles. He liked Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," but thought it was too pretty. So he began writing his own answer to Gershwin and the new world of jazz. The grittier, not-as-pretty result, Antheil's "Jazz Symphony," is in today's show. We'll hear a performance by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.

"There where you are not, there happiness lies." Those are the closing lines from Franz Schubert's song, "The Wanderer." What started as a simple song of longing and loss turned into an orchestral barn-burner. Schubert liked the tune so much, he turned it into a piano piece. And then Franz Liszt got hold of it and made it into a showcase for piano and orchestra. Today, we'll hear a performance of "The Wanderer Fantasy" by pianist Antti Siirala and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, in concert in Stuttgart, Germany.