Performance Today®

When you think of three instruments that just naturally belong together, it's not likely your first thought would be banjo, string bass, and tabla (Indian drums). Banjoist Bela Fleck, bassist Edgar Meyer, and tabla player Zakir Hussain come from very different musical backgrounds, but they've formed a unique and compelling trio that is capturing the attention of music lovers. PT's Fred Child hosted a live event last Sunday in Miami, featuring interviews and performances by Fleck, Meyer, and Hussain. We'll hear highlights on today's show.

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.

American conductor James Levine is normally very busy this time of year. He's music director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York as well as the Boston Symphony. But Levine is out recuperating from back surgery. He was supposed to make his return to the podium this week, but Levine's doctors nixed that. He's under orders to take it easy for a while longer. The staff of PT wishes him a speedy recovery. In today's show, we'll feature a pre-surgery performance of Levine conducting the Boston Symphony in Haydn's Symphony Number 104.

Pianist Maurizio Pollini says it's his job as a performer to "make the sense clear: the necessity of the notes." Not just to get the notes right or even just to make them expressive or beautiful. He says he has to convince the listener of the rightness of what the composer wrote, so that it sounds as if no other notes could possibly follow. We think Pollini does a convincing job on Mozart's Piano Concerto Number 12, in a performance with the Vienna Philharmonic.

Valery Gergiev is one of the most dynamic conductors of our time: expressive face, penetrating eyes, dramatic gyrations and leaps on the podium. But he also likes to be very precise -- he generally conducts, not with a baton, but with a toothpick held between his right thumb and forefinger. Last month, Gergiev opened the new season with the London Symphony Orchestra by using a toothpick to conduct "Daphnis and Chloe" by Maurice Ravel.

The great young American pianist Jonathan Biss joins Fred in our studio to play, and talk about, music by Franz Schubert. For Biss, Schubert's music is infused with "joyful sadness and tragic joy," these two emotional poles interweave seamlessly. Jonathan Biss plays the opening movement from Schubert's A-Major Sonata. And also introduces us to quietly quirky works by his favorite living composer: Gyorgy Kurtag.

The Vienna Philharmonic is one of the great orchestras in the world...and one of the most unusual. They play horns and oboes no one else uses. All the major decisions affecting the orchestra are made by members of the orchestra. And they have no single conductor, they dispensed with that model in 1933. All their conductors are guests, serving at the pleasure of the orchestra. From a concert last month in Lucerne, Switzerland, the Vienna Philharmonic and guest conductor Franz Welser-Most perform the elegant (and cheeky) Symphony No. 98, by Haydn.

We'll feature the wide emotional range of the piano in today's show, from two charming and reflective miniatures played by Stephen Hough and Jose Enrique Bagaria, to Beethoven's brooding and powerful third piano concerto. Alfred Brendel performs with Franz Welser-Most and the Cleveland Orchestra, in one of his last American appearances before he retired last year.

Conductor Valery Gergiev brings a penetrating intelligence to the podium, but when the moment for music-making arrives, he also has a primal intensity that can produce riveting performances. From a concert last month in London, Gergiev leads the London Symphony in Claude Debussy's musical picture of the primal power of the sea, "La Mer."