Performance Today®

Obituaries this week have called him a classical music critic, or a classical music writer. At Performance Today, we remember Michael Steinberg as classical music sage. Steinberg's reviews, books, concert notes and lectures had a way of getting at the essence of music, and at the essence of the *experience* of music. Michael Steinberg was 80 when he died this past weekend.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And in 1798, Joseph Haydn told that story in music. Haydn's greatest work may have been his oratorio, "The Creation." Music that is at once reverent, and ravishingly beautiful. We'll hear Part One from Haydn's Creation in a glorious concert a week and a half ago at the 2009 BBC Proms, in London. Paul McCreesh conducting his Gabrieli Consort, and a massed ensemble of nearly 200 musicians and singers.

Last year, high school student Paula Gil took part in the annual "Young Composers Project" in Toronto. And the Gryphon Trio liked her piece so much, they played it at one of their regular chamber concerts. We'll hear young Paula Gil's "Gryphon March."

Pianist Maurizio Pollini is old-school: when he plays, he makes no facial expressions, he doesn't gyrate or moan or gesticulate. One critic wrote "there are morticians who go about their duties more chirpily than Pollini on the concert platform." You may not be able to *see* Pollini's engagement with the music, but you can *hear* it in every note he plays. We'll hear Maurizio Pollini in concert with the Vienna Philharmonic, playing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2.

Richard Tognetti is a terrific violinist, and a graceful, athletic surfer. We'll hear Tognetti lead the Australian Chamber Orchestra in concert, playing Haydn's Symphony No. 44 near some prime surfing...in Santa Barbara, California.

Pianist Sergio Tiempo put on a jaw-dropping display at the International Chopin Festival in Warsaw, and the audience went nuts. We'll hear his three encores as they happened, each more astonishing than the last. Finishing with Tiempo's own arrangement: one Chopin Etude with his right hand, and *another* with his left, simultaneously. Sounds impossible, but he did it, and the audience literally screamed, shouted, and stomped their approval.

In 1895, Sir Henry Wood created a music festival that was inexpensive, informal, and accessible for everyone: the Proms in London. From the first night of the 2009 Proms, a concert last Friday, the BBC Symphony Orchestra lights Stravinsky's Fireworks, and plays Edward Elgar's overture "In the South."

Richard Tognetti is a terrific violinist, and a graceful, athletic surfer. We'll hear Tognetti lead the Australian Chamber Orchestra in concert, playing Haydn's Symphony No. 44 near some prime surfing...in Santa Barbara, California.

"No risk, no fun!" says recorder virtuoso Matthias Maute. Maute focuses on music from the late 1600s and early 1700s, when composers expected a certain degree of improvisation from musicians. Tuesday, Maute plays a Vivaldi concerto at the Library of Congress, sometimes reading the written notes, sometimes making it up as he goes.