Performance Today®

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra recently completed an eight-city tour of China. We'll go to their concert in Shanghai to hear Christoph Konig lead them in Beethoven's powerful Symphony No. 7.

We'll have music both new and old that echoes with the sound of the 1920's. Composer John Harbison will talk about his new "Great Gatsby" Suite before we listen to the recent world premiere performance from Colorado's Aspen Festival. And we'll go to Houston to hear Jon Kimura Parker play George Gershwin's Piano Concerto with Hans Graf and the Houston Symphony.

Later this week, we'll be broadcasting from Colorado's Aspen Music Festival, and presenting a live concert from there. But we'll have plenty of music from Aspen today, including Rachmaninoff preludes from pianist Lang Lang; a Mozart piano trio featuring violinist Julia Fischer, cellist Daniel Muller-Schott and pianist Jonathan Gilad; and South American works from guitarist Sharon Isbin.

We'll spend an hour with music that evokes raging storms and unsettled seas. Wagner's "Flying Dutchman" Overture sets sail from Aspen, Colorado. Le Concert d'Astree summons up a storm by Rameau at France's Palace of Versailles. And we'll have some Malcolm Arnold sea shanties for winds before docking in Risor, Norway, for a lovely Mahler Adagietto.

A few weeks ago, conductor Gianandrea Noseda led the BBC Philharmonic in a pair of pieces by Robert Schumann at the orchestra's home hall in Manchester, England. We'll go there to hear Schumann's Overture to "Genoveva", as well as his lone Cello Concerto, with Paul Watkins as soloist.

We'll spend an hour with performances from Australian musicians and composers. The Australian Chamber Orchestra plays Walton, Corelli and Debussy on a U.S. tour stop in Boston. Then we'll hear music of Australian composers Nigel Westlake (from the Australia Ensemble), Sarah Hopkins (courtesy of Chanticleer), and Percy Grainger from pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin.

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.

We'll go to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, where conductor Marcus Stenz leads the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Colin Matthews' orchestration of some Claude Debussy piano preludes. Then Jean-Yves Thibaudet is the soloist for a performance of Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand.

On today's show, one of the world's great piano trios, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, performs one of the masterpieces of the trio repertoire, Beethoven's "Ghost" Trio. It comes to us from a concert in Kalamazoo, Michigan.