Performance Today®

The serious and the silly from Marlboro Music, in Vermont. We'll hear an astonishing 2007 performance that exemplifies the Marlboro practice of teaming young professionals with chamber music veterans: the then 17-year-old violin phenom Benjamin Beilman with an ensemble that includes venerable violist Samuel Rhodes, and pianist Richard Goode, co-Artistic Director of Marlboro Music. We'll hear their performance of the f-minor Piano Quintet, by Brahms. With so much intense rehearsal and performance every summer at Marlboro, there are some long-standing traditions for blowing off steam: elaborate pranks, and throwing wadded-up napkins in the dining hall. Half a dozen musicians from this year's festival weigh in on the joy (and the distraction) of Marlboro's napkin balls and pranks.

All this week on Performance Today, we'll be visiting the legendary Marlboro Music Festival in Marlboro, Vermont. Host Fred Child spent some time there recently. It's a rare "republic of equals," as its founder Rudolf Serkin called it, with young professionals and seasoned veterans playing side-by-side. As the week unfolds, we'll hear about the magic of Marlboro from the people who make it their home for seven weeks each summer.

Ah, the eternal question: to clap, or not to clap between movements? The debate has been rekindled at the BBC Proms in London this summer. Some audience members are applauding between movements without being shushed by their neighbors, and according to some observers, they're eliciting pleasure from musicians on stage. We'll hear two examples from concerts last week. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic played the first two movements from Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony, and got applause after both. Pianist Paul Lewis and the BBC Symphony got applause after the first and last movements of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4. And feel free to clap for composer Bruce Adolphe, who has a brand new Piano Puzzler this week.

Alexander Scriabin would have balked at the word composer. He was so much more than that. A mystic, a metaphysician, one who would bring about the enlightenment and salvation of humankind through art. While his musical contributions were significant, they didn't quite measure up to all that. Pianist Nelson Goerner taps into his inner mystic to bring Scriabin's wild and quirky piano concerto to life, from a concert last week at the BBC Proms in London.

No one ever accused Gustav Mahler of being overly modest. When he finished his Eighth Symphony, he wrote, "Try to imagine the whole universe beginning to ring and resound. There are no longer human voices, but planets and suns revolving." It's art on the grandest of scales, Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand. We'll hear Part One, from the opening concert at this year's BBC Proms in London.

Ah, the eternal question: to clap, or not to clap between movements? The debate has been rekindled at the BBC Proms in London this summer. Some audience members are applauding between movements without being shushed by their neighbors, and according to some observers, they're eliciting pleasure from musicians on stage. We'll hear two examples from concerts last week. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic played the first two movements from Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony, and got applause after both. Pianist Paul Lewis and the BBC Symphony got applause after the first and last movements of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4. And feel free to clap for composer Bruce Adolphe, who has a brand new Piano Puzzler this week.

"You get a sense of Beethoven the virtuoso enjoying the fact that he can play piano -- it's a wonderfully exhilarating and free kind of piece." So says English pianist Paul Lewis about Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1. Lewis is playing all five Beethoven Piano Concertos at the BBC Proms in London this summer. On Wednesday last week, he played No. 1 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Lewis gave a wonderfully exhilarating performance himself, prompting hearty ovations after the first and last movements, as you can hear on Tuesday's PT.

In 1985, composer John Adams had a daughter named Emily, but he and his wife nicknamed her "Quackie." One night, Adams dreamed that Quackie was riding on the shoulder of mediaeval mystic Meister Eckhardt, and as they floated through the night sky, she whispered in the master's ear, sharing the secret of grace. That dream inspired an ethereal movement called "Meister Eckhardt and Quackie" in Adams' 1985 piece, Harmonielehre. The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra plays it, in concert at the Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam. In a similar vein, Samuel Barber was inspired by a made-up phrase in James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake." Barber's "Fadograph of a Yestern Scene" is a nostalgic look back, a wonderfully reflective and rarely played gem of American music. Our concert performance is by the Polish National Radio Symphony.

The BBC Proms is a massive summer music festival in London, with concerts every night for eight weeks at the Royal Albert Hall. We'll hear highlights from a concert this past week: 34 year-old Vasily Petrenko conducting the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic in a performance of Schumann's Manfred Overture, and the final movement from Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony. (Both works inspired by the tragic hero of Lord Byron's romantic poem, Manfred.)