Performance Today®

Composer Christopher Gunning often advised emerging composers not to wait to write their symphonies until they were too old and tired to do so, and he followed his advice by completing THIRTEEN symphonies before his death in 2023. On today's show, conductor Kenneth Woods leads the Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra in a performance of Christopher Gunning's Symphony No. 10. Plus, Bruce Adolphe has this week’s Piano Puzzler!

Clarinetist David Shifrin served as Artistic Director of Chamber Music Northwest for 40 years, and composer David Ludwig wrote a concerto to celebrate Shifrin's artistry and legacy. We'll hear it today—David Shifrin plays the world premiere of Ludwig's Les Adieux at a Chamber Music Northwest event in Portland, Oregon.

African-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor spent most of his life in London. Still, in the first decade of the 1900s, he toured the US several times and fell in love with African-American spirituals. On today's show, we'll hear a piece that Coleridge-Taylor wrote inspired by one of these spirituals: Keep Me from Sinking Down.

Composer Christopher Gunning often advised emerging composers not to wait to write their symphonies until they were too old and tired to do so, and he followed his advice by completing THIRTEEN symphonies before his death in 2023. On today's show, conductor Kenneth Woods leads the Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra in a performance of Christopher Gunning's Symphony No. 10.

Composer Sheridan Seyfried wrote a double concerto for two violin-playing brothers, Timothy and Nikki Chooi. Seyfried wanted to express their special bond AND their individual personalities. On today's episode, hear an expression of what it means to be family: Sheridan Seyfried's Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra.

The young Beethoven borrowed a song that everybody was singing in Vienna, a tune from a popular opera. Beethoven made it very much his own by writing nine playful variations. On today's show, hear an all-star performance of Beethoven's Gassenhauer Trio, from a concert in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

Sometimes it's not so much the content as the package it comes in—and Sergei Prokofiev was great at repackaging his own material. In the late 1920s, he took a fiery opera destined for dust and turned it into a mighty symphony he dearly loved. On today's show, we'll take you to a concert in Cincinnati to hear Prokofiev's Symphony No. 3.

When violinist Ilya Gringolts was just a kid in the USSR, his first teacher told him to quit the violin, that he had no talent. Fortunately, he didn't let that stop him. Now, he's THRIVING. On today's show, we'll take you to a concert in Switzerland to hear Ilya Gringolts play Pablo de Sarasate's Spanish Dances.

Conductor Delyana Lazarova calls herself a "musical migrant." She was born in Bulgaria, lives in England, and conducts orchestras all around the world. On today's show, Lazarova conducts the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra in a performance of "Night," a symphonic poem by Bulgarian composer Marin Goleminov.