Performance Today®

This past Monday night, there was a gala all-Chopin concert at the Grand Theater in downtown Warsaw. We'll hear highlights: Yundi Li (winner of the 2000 Chopin Piano Competition) plays a pair of Chopin Nocturnes, and Garrick Ohlsson (winner of the 1970 Chopin Competition) plays a Chopin Waltz. And our series "Music That Matters" continues with a return to Ramallah, on the West Bank. We'll hear more from the music school "Al Kamandjati," founded by violist Ramzi Aburedwan. And from their annual winter concert in Ramallah, the Al Kamandjati Players perform the final movement from Vivaldi's "Autumn," from "The Four Seasons."

Our monthly series "Music That Matters" returns with the story of Ramzi Aburedwan, who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp. When he was 8 years old, Aburedwan became the subject of a famous photograph, a boy throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. Ten years later, he learned to play viola. Aburedwan says "I fell in love immediately, and from that day until today I am in the world of music." In 2005, Aburedwan founded a music school in Ramallah, on the West Bank.

David Soyer played his cello for 37 years as a member of the legendary Guarneri Quartet. He retired from the quartet in 2001, at age 78. But Soyer continued teaching until just before he died last week, at age 87. Guarneri Quartet members Arnold Steinhardt and Peter Wiley join us with fond memories of David Soyer, his remarkable musicianship, and his role as mentor in the lives of so many musicians. And we'll hear from several of Soyer's classic recordings with the Guarneri Quartet, including music by Dvorak, Beethoven, and Grieg.

Yesterday was Frederic Chopin's 200th birthday. Of all the celebrations across the globe in his honor, the one we're most excited to bring you is from Chopin's home town in Poland. American pianist Garrick Ohlsson gave a very special recital there yesterday. He played on an 1848 Pleyel piano once owned by Chopin, in a manor house in Chopin's home town. The recital was broadcast live over Polish radio, to a nation that Ohlsson admits is "Chopin-crazy." In today's show, we'll have highlights.

Today marks Frederic Chopin's 200th birthday. Chopin left Poland in 1830 for a concert tour, assuming it was a short trip. But shortly after that, war broke out, and he never returned to his homeland. The last piece he ever played in Poland was his first piano concerto. Today, Daniel Barenboim performs it with Asher Fisch and the Berlin Philharmonic. Barenboim, Fisch, and Berlin all return Friday to play the second concerto. We have special Chopin programming all week, including a gala concert happening today at his boyhood home, featuring pianist Garrick Ohlsson. We'll bring you highlights on tomorrow's show.

The young Sergei Prokofiev was fed up with critics who thought he could only write avant-garde music. So he threw them a musical curve ball, his "Classical" symphony, written in a Haydnesque style. He called it "a challenge to make the geese angry." John Axelrod leads the Swiss Italian Orchestra, in concert in Lugano, Switzerland.

In Vancouver, the women's slalom is Friday and the men's slalom is Saturday, but the musical Slalom is on Performance Today. Carter Pann is an American composer, and an avid skier. He wrote a ten-minute orchestral piece that he hopes captures the exhilaration of downhill skiing. It's fun, fast, kinetic music, and we'll hear it from a concert by the Dallas Wind Symphony: "Slalom," by Carter Pann.

American figure skater Rachael Flatt says "it's one of my all-time favorite pieces of music. It's very heartfelt, very emotional, which is great for the Olympics." She's talking about the 18th variation in Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini." Tonight at the Olympics, Rachael Flatt will skate to that excerpt in her long program. Today on PT, we'll hear the entire piece. The Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic and pianist Enrico Pace in concert at the Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam.

Daniel Barenboim is the pianist when baritone Thomas Quasthoff sings Schubert songs in Berlin. Then Barenboim will conduct the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a group he formed with young musicians from several Middle Eastern countries. They'll play music of Mozart and Elgar at an historic concert in the Palestinian city of Ramallah.