Performance Today®

Tilting at windmills. Doing battle with a flock of sheep. Miguel de Cervantes' wildly delusional knight-errant, Don Quixote, has been a favorite literary character since he first appeared in 1605. Quixote puts in appearance on today's show in the form of Richard Strauss' tone poem of the same name. It calls for a solo cello and viola, portraying Don Quixote and his faithful sidekick, Sancho Panza. Cellist Tamas Varga and violist Christian Frohn are the featured soloists in this recent BBC Proms performance, with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Zubin Mehta.

For 16 years, Jaap van Zweden was concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. It's one of the best jobs a violinist could ever hope for...and van Zweden quit, so he could chase his dream of becoming a conductor. This past season, van Zweden was back in Amsterdam...conducting his old band-mates, as the current concertmaster soloed in the Violin Concerto by Samuel Barber.

American composer Charles Ives had a day job selling insurance, so he could feed his family. But in his free time, he fed his own soul by writing music. Ives' third symphony is peppered with hymn tunes that most audience members of the day would have easily recognized. Today, those kinds of cultural references might not be so easily understood. See how many tunes you can recognize as the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya perform Ives' third, nicknamed "Camp Meeting."

Nicolas Slonimsky was one of the great characters of 20th century music. An unrivalled storyteller, who also dabbled in conducting, composition, piano, and writing about music. Slonimsky was a friend of everyone in the new music scene for 75 years, from Ravel and Gershwin to Frank Zappa and John Adams. When the 101 year-old Slonimsky died in 1995, John Adams wrote a piece in memory of his hyper-kinetic energy and good humor: "Slonimsky's Earbox." On today's show, Donald Runnicles leads the BBC Scottish Symphony, in concert at the 2009 Proms in London.

Legendary Swan Songs: the final concert performances by three 20th century masters. Leonard Bernstein was almost 72 years old in the fall of 1990, conducting a concert by the Boston Symphony. He'd been suffering from emphysema for several years. In the third movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, Bernstein began coughing and couldn't stop. The concert almost came to a halt, but somehow Bernstein controlled his coughing fit, and kept going. We'll hear the final movement from that performance...which turned out to be the last notes of Bernstein's final concert. Also, the final delicate encore from Vladimir Horowitz at age 83 in Hamburg. And highlights from the last concert by violinist Nathan Milstein, in Stockholm in 1986.

Quartet San Francisco is Jeremy Cohen's way of combining his two great loves in life: classical music and non-classical music. Their new project is Cohen's arrangements of jazz classics by Dave Brubeck. We'll stop in at a legendary jazz club in San Francisco, Yoshi's, to hear the Quartet San Francisco, play "Take Five." And Jeremy Cohen talks about the challenge of arranging and playing jazz for string quartet.

The Imani Winds is commissioning ten new works to celebrate their ten years together. On today's show, we'll hear the world premiere of Jason Moran's "Cane," written for the Imani Winds. In it, Moran tells his own family history, centered near Louisiana's Cane River. Moran traces his ancestry through a slave woman named Coin-Coin. She won own freedom, and then became a successful plantation owner, earning money to purchase her own children's freedom. "Cane" is our weekly 21st-century feature.

Violinist Nikolaj Znaider is a big name in the world of classical music. And yet, he says there's nothing harder than playing Mozart. Many artists would agree. The legendary pianist Artur Schnabel said that Mozart is too easy for children, but too difficult for professionals. Meaning that it's not the notes that are the problem, it's bringing out the beauty of the notes in just the right interpretation. On today's show, Znaider proves he's up to the task, performing Mozart's fifth violin concerto with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

Quartet San Francisco is Jeremy Cohen's way of combining his two great loves in life: classical music and non-classical music. Their new project is Cohen's arrangements of jazz classics by Dave Brubeck. We'll stop in at a legendary jazz club in San Francisco, Yoshi's, to hear the Quartet San Francisco, play "Take Five." And Jeremy Cohen talks about the challenge of arranging and playing jazz for string quartet.