Performance Today®

Is it a 40-minute joke? It certainly has humor, but the 1903 Symphonia Domestica by Strauss is a serious symphony...that just happens to be inspired by an average day at home with the family. It has musical descriptions of putting the baby to sleep, the alarm clock going off in the morning, playful fights between husband and wife, etc. Our concert was three weeks ago at the Royal Albert Hall in London, Donald Runnicles leads the BBC Scottish Symphony.

The great American guitarist Jason Vieaux is back for day two of music and conversation. Vieaux plays the Spanish classic "Capriccio Arabe" by Francisco Tarrega, Variations on Mozart's Magic Flute by Fernando Sor...and his own classical-style arrangement of a tune by jazz guitarist Pat Metheny. Vieaux also talks about meeting and playing with Pat Metheny. (He says: "It was like meeting a Beatle!")

It may be the gentlest, sweetest version of the Ode to Joy you will ever hear. Last month, the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain invited audience members to bring their ukuleles to a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London. They even scheduled a rehearsal, and a thousand ukulele players learned their arrangement of Beethoven's Ode to Joy. We'll hear how it came together in concert.

Composer John Adams was astonished at the reaction to his sprawling 1982 piece for two pianos, three singers and orchestra, his "Grand Pianola Music." Adams says the "piece genuinely upset people...I meant it neither as a joke...nor as a provocation of any kind. It was rather, in its loudest and most hyperventilated moments, a kind of Whitmanesque yawp, an exhilaration of good humor, certainly a parody and therefore ironic." We'll hear it in all its yawping glory, from a concert last month by the London Sinfonietta at the Proms in London.

Every Friday, Performance Today features 21st century music. This week, it's a co-creation of composer Robert Kapilow and a voice you may recognize: Fred Newman does vocal sound effects on A Prairie Home Companion. Their new choral work is "Crosstown M42," named after a bus line in New York City. Fred Newman vocalizes New York sound effects, with supporting vocal effects (and even some singing!) from the Young People's Chorus of New York City.

Henry Purcell was born 350 years ago today...maybe. Birthdays were not as big a deal in 17th century England as they are for us, and Purcell's family kept no record of the date of his birth, or even his baptism. Whether it's the exact date or not, Thursday is a fine day to celebrate the 350th birthday of this great English composer. We'll hear highlights from his Ode for Saint Cecilia's Day, and three miniatures by Purcell.

Conductors often encourage timpanists to play quietly, to avoid drowning out the orchestra. But in Mozart's Serenata Notturna, the timpani emphasize the comic folksiness of the music, and in concert performances of this piece, conductors sometimes let timpanists off their leashes. We'll hear Joseph Pereira having a field day on the timpani, in concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Composer John Adams was astonished at the reaction to his sprawling 1982 piece for two pianos, three singers and orchestra, his "Grand Pianola Music." Adams says the "piece genuinely upset people...I meant it neither as a joke...nor as a provocation of any kind. It was rather, in its loudest and most hyperventilated moments, a kind of Whitmanesque yawp, an exhilaration of good humor, certainly a parody and therefore ironic." We'll hear it in all its yawping glory, from a concert last month by the London Sinfonietta at the Proms in London.

American composer Christopher Theofanidis says it was "almost embarrassing" to compose a piece with "three happy movements." But he'd written a series of works with dark undercurrents, and wanted to create what he calls "uplifting, happy-to-be-alive music." The result was "Visions and Miracles," his 1997 piece for string orchestra. We have a concert performance from the 2009 Strings Festival, in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.