Performance Today®

Every Friday, PT features 21st century music. This week, the world premiere of the "Mercury Concerto" by Carter Pann. 20 minutes of virtuosic music for flute and orchestra, inspired by the real-life love story of the flutist who played the premiere. (And...Carter Pann says there is a subtle hint of classic 70s rock in the opening movement.)

The great American baritone Thomas Hampson kicked off the 2009 edition of his "Song of America" tour last week. From their concert in Winona, Minnesota, Thomas Hampson and pianist Craig Rutenberg perform "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven," an entertainingly melodramatic song about the man who founded the Salvation Army.

Fred is hosting today from Aspen Public Radio, in Colorado. Conductor David Zinman and pianist Yefim Bronfman talk about the "total lunatic episode" in Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3, and we'll hear their wild performance with the Aspen Chamber Symphony. And this week's Piano Puzzler caller is Alan Fletcher, President of the Aspen Music Festival and School.

A tragic love story and a happy love story intertwined at the Festival del Sole in Napa Valley, California. Conductor Stephane Deneve had a fairy-tale wedding in a lovely Napa Valley winery...and the next night, Deneve conducted a performance of Gabriel Faure's Suite from Pelleas and Melisande, music inspired by a love story where everything that CAN go wrong DOES go wrong. We'll hear the Faure performance, Stephane Deneve leading the Russian National Orchestra.

By Leonard Slatkin's count, there are over 80 different orchestrations of Modest Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition." He tapped into 15 of them to create a unique version of the work. He leads the Nashville Symphony in a performance of it at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville.

The PT debut of a young and talented (and irreverent) chamber orchestra from Boston that calls itself "A Far Cry." They'll play Benjamin Britten's playful "Simple Symphony." And a rarely-played gem: the Sextet in C by Erno Dohnanyi. Fred explains *why* it's so rarely played (there's a good reason!), and we'll hear an exemplary performance by members of the Nash Ensemble, in concert in Boston.

Bruce Adolphe is the creator of the PT Piano Puzzler...and one of his dear friends was composer Nicholas Maw. Maw died this spring at age 73. Bruce Adolphe has a personal remembrance, and some thoughts on why so many people find Maw's music so compelling.

David Washburn is a *great* trumpet player, a member of three orchestras in Los Angeles. And Americans can sing along with him every evening. He plays the solo trumpet on the theme of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. We'll hear David Washburn play an elegant Trumpet Concerto by Tomaso Albinoni, in concert at the Music@Menlo Festival in California.

Music that began with the word "no." An oboe-playing American GI in 1945 asked Richard Strauss if he'd ever consider writing an oboe concerto. Strauss gave that one word answer...but a few months later, he composed his Oboe Concerto in D Major. We'll hear a concert performance from Stockholm; Daniel Harding conducting the Swedish Radio Symphony, with oboe soloist Francois Leleux.