Performance Today®

Conductor Valery Gergiev is a hot commodity. He's one of the busiest conductors around, always in high demand. With four regular conducting gigs, he's been called the "hardest working man in show biz." Today we'll hear him conduct the London Symphony Orchestra in music from Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony from London's Barbican Hall.

Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard's career is on the upswing. He's been busy making a name for himself with some great concerts lately. His recording of Bach's "Art of the Fugue" is a hot seller. Today we'll hear him in a performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

Today, we'll hear the king of instruments in the hands of a master. Organist Paul Jacobs joins the Pacific Symphony for a performance of Camille Saint-Saens' Organ Symphony from the Orange County Performing Arts Center in California. The occasion marked the debut of that new instrument -- all 4,322 pipes of it.

Georges Bizet's Symphony in C sat on a shelf at the Paris Conservatory for 80 years before it was discovered. Bizet wrote it while he was a student there. The world didn't find out about it until long after his death. We'll hear a performance of this teen-aged masterpiece by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in New York City.

When Richard Strauss compared himself to Napoleon and wrote a piece about himself, calling it "A Hero's Life," he had his tongue planted firmly in his cheek. Some of the critics didn't get the joke - Strauss parodied them in the piece. Today we'll hear music from "A Hero's Life" featuring the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Today we'll feature two great symphonies, Schumann's Symphony No. 2 and Mozart's Symphony No. 40. Both were written during times of anguish in the composers' lives, but somehow each managed to find healing in the creative process. It's music to soothe the soul and challenge the spirit, today on Performance Today.

Igor Stravinsky was quite the cosmopolitan. He lived all over the world, finally settling in the U.S. for the last three decades of his life. Today we'll hear his Italian Suite for violin and piano from a concert in Bucharest, Romania. Plus, Gershwin's Cuban Overture from Munich and an Argentinian tango from California.

Today, we'll hear the king of instruments in the hands of a master. Organist Paul Jacobs joins the Pacific Symphony for a performance of Camille Saint-Saens' Organ Symphony from the Orange County Performing Arts Center in California. The occasion marked the debut of that new instrument -- all 4,322 pipes of it.

Gershwin had it. Pianist Jon Kimura Parker has it. It's that masterful sense of timing, of where and when to place every note for just the right amount of swing. It's rhythm, and you'll have it too after listening to today's show. Pianist Jon Kimura Parker joins the Colorado Symphony for George Gershwin's Variations on "I Got Rhythm."