Performance Today®

Pianist Maurizio Pollini has been accused of being stiff and unemotional on stage. One writer said, "There are morticians who go about their duties more chirpily than Pollini on the concert platform." That may be, but he manages to coax a lot of emotion out of that wooden box of hammers and strings. He's been a beloved grand master of the piano for half a century. Pollini joins Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic for a lively - and emotional - performance of Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto.

The lush sound of the Philadelphia Orchestra is an ideal fit for Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. We'll go to the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia to hear Christoph Eschenbach conduct the final three movements of this emotionally turbulent masterpiece.

The biggest summer music festival of them all gets underway this week. The BBC Proms kicks off in London on Friday. We'll be bringing you great Proms performances for the rest of the summer. In today's show, a remembrance of Proms past, a couple of highlights from past summers at the Proms. Violinist Leila Josefowicz plays the Meditation from Jules Massenet's opera "Thais." And the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus perform a Proms favorite: Hubert Parry's "Jerusalem." Plus, music for Bastille Day, and the Piano Puzzler.

The great American violinist Midori joins host Fred Child for nearly a full hour of music and conversation. She and pianist Robert McDonald play the opening movement from the Violin Sonata No. 1 by Brahms, the complete Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano by Paul Hindemith, and a bon-bon by Fritz Kreisler, Syncopation. Midori opens the hour with a solo performance of the opening Adagio from the Violin Sonata in g-minor by Bach (BWV 1001). Midori will talk about the singular power of music by Bach, and about the many ways in which she is reaching out to young musicians, and young listeners.

The venerable Vienna Philharmonic: keepers of the highest classical standards, minders of the grand Viennese tradition of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, and Mahler. We'll catch up with the Vienna Philharmonic at an outdoor concert they gave last month in their hometown, playing -- for the first time in their history -- music from the soundtrack to Star Wars, by John Williams. Plus a survey of highlights from American music festival in the spring of this year, including the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra performing Mozart's Symphony No. 35.

Ferdinand Schubert was a packrat...and thank goodness for that. Ferdinand was the brother of composer Franz Schubert. When Robert Schumann came to visit in 1839, Schumann was surprised to find stacks of music lying all around the apartment. Franz Schubert had died a decade earlier, and among the mess, Schumann discovered an unknown masterpiece. It's come to be called the "Great Symphony," Schubert's Symphony No. 9. We'll hear a concert in London. Sir Charles Mackerras conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra.

When Gustav Mahler was working on his Symphony No. 10, his heart was broken -- literally and figuratively. He had contracted an incurable heart disease, and his wife was having an affair. Pondering mortality, love, and loss, he finished his last work: the opening movement of his Symphony No. 10. Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas talks about Mahler's heartache, and leads the San Francisco Symphony in a concert performance. MTT also guides us, and the San Francisco Symphony, through the final section of Mahler's Symphony No. 8. And in part two of this month's edition of our occasional series, "Music That Matters," we'll hear from the inmates at a women's prison in Alaska whose lives are being changed by the chance to play in an orchestra.

Our Mahler celebrations continue, one day after Gustav Mahler's 150th birthday. Barbara Haws, archivist of the New York Philharmonic, talks about Mahler's brief time as Music Director of the Philharmonic. (And tells a story about Mahler visiting an opium den in New York. He didn't inhale.) We'll hear a classic New York Philharmonic recording of the Adagietto from Mahler's Symphony No. 5. Plus, Mahler the outdoorsman -- two of his orchestral movements inspired, in part, by flowers. And our series "Music That Matters" returns with a visit to an orchestra of inmates at a women's prison in Alaska.

What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of death? Composer Gustav Mahler, born 150 years ago today, asked the big questions in his work. We'll hear highlights from two recent and extraordinary Mahler concerts. Gustavo Dudamel leads the LA Philharmonic in the final two movements of Mahler's Symphony No. 1, and Franz Welser-Most leads the Cleveland Orchestra in the final two movements of Mahler's Symphony No. 2, the Resurrection Symphony.