Performance Today®

Years ago, there were few if any American orchestras that could measure up to those in Europe. Now, many of the finest bands in the world are from the states. The next orchestral frontier is in Asia, with several talented groups emerging. On today's show, the KBS Symphony Orchestra from Seoul, South Korea, plays Tchaikovsky's sixth symphony. Claus Peter Flor conducts.

Violinist Rachel Podger was once told by her teacher that Baroque violin playing was only for those who can't play real violin. So she sneaked out and took Baroque violin lessons on the side. Podger has since become one of the great early music interpreters, and performs with London's Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in today's show. Podger is both soloist and conductor in a Haydn violin concerto.

Ukrainian pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk saw everything slip away in an instant seven years ago, when a car crash led to a month-long coma. Gavrylyuk has fully recovered from that accident, and his playing is more powerful and poetic than ever. We'll hear him play Chopin and Scriabin Etudes in concert in Miami. And another musician who has come back from a potentially devastating injury: violinist Peter Oundjian lost full use of his left hand due to a repetitive stress disorder. So he took up conducting. Today he'll lead the Toronto Symphony in excerpts from Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 4.

On this Martin Luther King Day, our entire show is devoted to a celebration of the life of Dr. King. Music was an important force in the civil rights movement, and important in the personal life of Dr. King as well. Thursday night in Atlanta, the Atlanta Symphony and the singers of Morehouse and Spelman Colleges in Atlanta presented a King celebration concert. We'll hear highlights from that concert in both hours today.

This weekend on PT, it's our Piano Puzzler. Composer Bruce Adolphe re-writes a familiar tune in the style of a great classical composer. We get a listener on the phone who tries to guess the hidden tune, and the composer whose style Bruce is mimicking. See if you can guess what Bruce is up to, on this weekend's Piano Puzzler.

George Enescu is best known for one work, his Romanian Rhapsody. He wrote it when he was 20, and for the rest of his life, it became his only work that people wanted to hear. It's probably not surprising that Enescu grew to hate it. Today, we'll hear a lively performance of the Romanian Rhapsody by the Central German Radio Symphony, led by Roman Kofman.

British conductor Nicholas McGegan says, "When I direct an orchestra, I don't see myself as working with them. I'm having fun with them." McGegan turns 60 today, and we'll celebrate the day by listening to him having fun with three different orchestras, Germany's Gottingen Festival Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Every Wednesday on PT, it's our Piano Puzzler. Composer Bruce Adolphe re-writes a familiar tune in the style of a great classical composer. We get a listener on the phone who tries to guess the hidden tune, and the composer whose style Bruce is mimicking. And...who's looking out for bassoonists? PT, that's who. We'll feature one of our favorite bassoon soloists, Peter Kolkay, in a concert performance of a Bassoon Quartet by Francois Devienne, from the OK Mozart Festival, in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. And we'll point out a bassoon highlight in Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, as we hear the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra in concert in Copenhagen.

Conductor Simon Rattle is back to introduce the Symphony No. 2, by Johannes Brahms. (Every Tuesday this month, Rattle joins host Fred Child to introduce one of the four Brahms symphonies.) Rattle says "this is a work where real unalloyed joy comes out, and that, in all of Brahms' output, is fairly rare." And we'll go to a concert in Berlin, with Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, in the complete symphony.