There are few more stirring and majestic works than Igor Stravinsky's "Firebird" Suite. And there are few more stirring and majestic settings than the Grand Teton Mountains of Wyoming. We'll go there to hear Andrey Boreyko lead the Grand Teton Festival Orchestra in Stravinsky's "Firebird."
Antonin Dvorak was inspired by the sound of birds when he wrote his Eighth Symphony. But it's also a work of widely varying emotions, of ebullient joy and deep sorrow. From Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, David Robertson leads the L.A. Philharmonic in a stirring performance.
Has a new portrait of Mozart been discovered? Mozart scholar Daniel Leeson thinks so, and he'll explain the key clues uncovered in his investigation. Then we'll go to Cincinnati, where flutist Sharon Bezaly plays Mozart's Second Flute Concerto and Andante for Flute and Orchestra with Paavo Jarvi and the Cincinnati Symphony.
O.K., we don't have them playing together. But cellist Yo-Yo Ma will talk about developing his own style before he plays the Dvorak concerto with Hans Graf and the Houston Symphony. And pianist Lang Lang joins Fred Child in the studio for some conversation and a Chinese folk tune.
Pianist Stephen Kovacevich will describe the pain involved in Beethoven's First Piano Concerto before playing it with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. And Boris Berezovsky tackles two of Leopold Godowsky's extremely demanding Chopin transcriptions in Suffolk, England.
Conductor Nicholas McGegan will take you on a colorful guided tour of Haydn's 92nd Symphony before leading the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in a performance of the work in St. Paul. Then we'll travel south to Northfield, where the male chorus, Cantus, will sing Thomas Tallis'"Lamentations of Jeremiah."
We'll mark the 323rd anniversary of the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach with performances of two of his greatest works. In Richmond, Virginia, Jos van Veldhoven leads the Netherlands Bach Society in the Kyrie and Credo from the Mass in B Minor. Then Sir John Eliot Gardiner talks about the man behind the music before conducting the Monteverdi Choir, London Oratory Junior Choir and English Baroque Soloists in excerpts from a work written for Good Friday, the "St. Matthew Passion."
Alan Gilbert is the next music director of the New York Philharmonic. But we'll catch up with him on the opposite coast, as he leads the L.A. Philharmonic in a suite from Richard Strauss' opera, "Der Rosenkavalier," a work that lilts with waltzes reminiscent of another Strauss.
Faure was an organist who played plenty of funerals. So, when he set out to compose a requiem, he wanted to do something different, create a work more concerned with comfort than grief. We'll have excerpts from a concert performance in Bellingham, Washington, by Michael Palmer and the Bellingham Festival Orchestra and Chorus.
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