Performance Today®

Today's show features two great choral masterpieces for Christmas. We'll feature Cantata I of Bach's "Christmas Oratorio" from Stockholm, Sweden, and selections from Handel's "Messiah," featuring Apollo's Fire from Cleveland. In addition, we'll talk with Rob Kapilow, author of a series of commentaries called "What Makes it Great?" He'll explain what makes Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" so great.

Today we'll celebrate the start of winter after yesterday's solstice. It's also the first full day of Hannukah, and Christmas is just a few days away. We'll have lots of great programming in honor of this most festive season of the year, featuring great performances from all over the world.

Sergei Rachmaninoff: Nine sections of "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini" Pianist Dmitri Alexeev with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Yuri Temirkanov

When Francis Poulenc was composing one particular piece, he said he was imagining angels sticking out their tongues and solemn monks playing soccer. The result is the gloriously irreverent "Gloria," for choir and orchestra. Today we'll hear Mariss Jansons and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra perform it in Amsterdam. Plus, the Rose Ensemble returns for some early American Christmas music.

The Rose Ensemble, one of the country's great early music groups, stopped by our studios recently to share some of their holiday music with us. Today, we'll feature them in a set of Baroque Christmas pieces from Mexico. It's a unique sound that's a blend of both the old and new worlds.

He's young, handsome, and plays a Guarneri violin. That's the equivalent of driving an expensive sports car. Today, the young Ukrainian violinist Andrej Bielow will take us on some fast curves and hairpin turns, as he performs Glazunov's violin concerto with the Slovak Radio Symphony in Bratislava, Slovakia. Mario Kosik conducts.

Not many of us can hope to be remembered when we've been gone almost two centuries. Beethoven is one of those rare humans who left an enormous legacy for future generations. Today, we'll wish him a happy 238th by playing two of his works. We'll hear the first symphony in Wyoming, and the first piano concerto in Los Angeles, featuring soloist Ingrid Fliter.

An hour of folk-flavored fare reaches a climax with a fiery performance of the Dvorak Cello Concerto. At a concert at Budapest's Palace of Arts, Pieter Wispelwey performs one of the great works for his instrument, in the company of conductor Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra.

Violinist Hilary Hahn was just nominated for two Grammy Awards for her 2008 recording of the Schoenberg and Sibelius violin concertos. Today we'll hear her in a performance of the Dvorak violin concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra, part of our week-long celebration of the Cleveland Orchestra's 90th anniversary season.