Performance Today®

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.

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.

Conductor David Robertson addresses the controversy about whether it's appropriate to applaud between movements of a symphony or not. His words to the audience come between the movements of a stirring performance of Dvorak's Eighth Symphony by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in L.A.

In honor of Independence Day, we'll explore the music of some very independent composers who helped establish a uniquely American sound. They include Aaron Copland (courtesy of the Prairie Winds and the Aspen Chamber Symphony), George Gershwin (from the Jupiter String Quartet), Christopher Theofanidis (from a world premiere performance by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra), and one of the country's first composers, John Antes.

Like many adult siblings, Gil and Orli Shaham don't get to see one another as often as they used to. But the violinist and pianist recently connected up on stage in suburban Atlanta and showed off their musical telepathy on a Mozart Violin Sonata.

It's still not clear who was being crowned when Mozart wrote the "Coronation" Mass. But it's a masterpiece for choir, orchestra and vocal soloists. And we have an outstanding performance of it from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, where Ton Koopman conducted the Netherlands Chamber Choir and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.