Performance Today®

The second hour of today's show features some especially heavenly music. We'll hear music inspired by the earth, the moon, and two of the planets - Mercury and Jupiter. And we'll finish with a performance by the Borealis Wind Quintet, named in honor of the aurora borealis - those ghostly, shimmery colored lights in the northern sky.

We're celebrating St. Patrick's Day today. We'll hear musicians from Ireland, like James Galway and Camerata Ireland. We'll hear music from Ireland, Bryn Terfel singing Danny Boy, and Irish tunes from the baroque to the modern. And some music inspired by Ireland, an American concerto for violin with Irish roots, by Mark O'Connor.

French horn players usually sit in the back of the orchestra. The bells of their instruments pointing backwards, their sound goes the wrong direction, towards the back of the stage. There's not much glory in that. But in today's show, the horn section of the German Symphony Orchestra moves to the front of the orchestra to perform Robert Schumann's Concert Piece for Four Horns in Berlin.

Sergei Prokofiev was living in Paris when he started writing his second violin concerto. But he suffered an incurable bout of homesickness, and returned to Russia in 1935. On today's show, we'll feature this half-French, half-Russian concerto. Violinist Liza Ferschtman is making her PT debut with this performance, accompanied by the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Yakov Kreizberg.

Usually, overtures are relegated to the start of a concert. They make great appetizers, with the symphonies and concertos forming the entrees for the evening. But sometimes, overtures are so good that you can make a whole meal out of them. We've got three of them in the second hour of today's show, plus a few other tasty morsels.

Sergei Prokofiev was living in Paris when he started writing his second violin concerto. But he suffered an incurable bout of homesickness, and returned to Russia in 1935. On today's show, we'll feature this half-French, half-Russian concerto. Violinist Liza Ferschtman is making her PT debut with this performance, accompanied by the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Yakov Kreizberg.

At age 43, Johannes Brahms completed his first symphony. That was ancient by the standards of the day. Today, we'll hear a first symphony written by a much older composer, the 66-year-old Cesar Franck. Turns out, it was the only symphony he ever wrote. The critics didn't like it much when it premiered in 1889. But the work has endured. Today, we'll hear a performance of the symphony by the Metropolitan Orchestra of Greater Montreal.

Today's show features two great symphonies - the Houston Symphony under Hans Graf, and the Cleveland Orchestra under Alan Gilbert. It also features two great symphonies - Tchaikovsky's second ("The Little Russian") and Dvorak's sixth. Plus, we'll hear an emotionally-charged performance by the young Ukrainian pianist, Alexander Gavrylyuk, playing music by Rachmaninoff.

Most people have never heard of Canadian composer Andre Mathieu. Mathieu was a rising star in the 1930s and 1940s. But he led a troubled life, dropped out of the music scene, and died in obscurity in 1968. Some call him the Canadian Mozart, although his style is closer to Rachmaninoff, who called Mathieu a genius. On today's show, Alain Lefevre performs Mathieu's fourth piano concerto with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra.