Performance Today®

Summer has finally arrived in the Northern Hemisphere. We're celebrating with music of the summer season in both hours of Performance Today. Everyone from violinist Joshua Bell to pianist Lang Lang will be turning up the heat with great performances. Plus, we'll hear two versions of the same work, George Gershwin's beautiful "Summertime."

Today is the first day of the Aspen Music Festival. Every summer, some of the greatest classical musicians in the world gather in Aspen, Colorado. To celebrate the opening of the festival, we'll hear a performance from last year's festival. Gil Shaham performs Beethoven's Violin Concerto with the Aspen Chamber Symphony.

The Beaux Arts Trio's days may be drawing to a close, but fortunately much-loved pianist Menahem Pressler has no plans to retire. One of the greatest chamber musicians of our time, a concert at Lincoln Center featuring him was billed as "The Pressler Connection." We'll hear a performance of Schubert's "Trout" Quintet from that concert.

Franz Schubert never got around to finishing his eighth symphony. He wrote the first two movements, and never completed the last two. Today, we'll hear what those final two movements might have sounded like, as envisioned by composer Anton Safronov. What would Schubert have thought of it? Find out in the second hour of Performance Today.

When chamber music lovers visit the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina, they don't know what's being played at the afternoon chamber music concerts until they see the program written on a chalkboard outside the Memminger Auditorium. And what a delight it must have been to see a masterpiece like Beethoven's Septet for Winds and Strings listed there a couple of weeks ago. We'll have that performance on today's show.

Liszt could take the music of just about any composer and create a transcription for piano that sounded like the composer, yet was uniquely Liszt. Pianist Yundi Li offers Liszt's version of Verdi from Baden-Baden, Germany. Then another pianist, Jorge Luis Prats, plays a Liszt transcription of Bach at the Miami International Piano Festival. And Angele Dubeau and La Pieta play a Brahms-Liszt combination in Athens, Georgia.

It's winter in the southern hemisphere now. Here in the north, we'll have to rely on violinist Joshua Bell to provide our icicles. He'll perform "Winter" from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" in Indiana. We'll also hear music inspired by the beauty of all the seasons, from Tchaikovsky's April in Russia to Astor Piazzolla's "Four Seasons of Buenos Aires."

Violinist Daniel Hope delivers another audio diary entry from the Beaux Arts Trio's final year together. They'll answer the question of how they got their name, and read a fan letter from the Faux Arts Trio. Then they'll play some Schubert in San Francisco, at the last concert of their last U.S. tour.

We'll have performances from two top student orchestras on today's show. The National Orchestral Institute gathers many of the country's best young musicians in Maryland for a month. That's where we'll go to hear Jorge Mester conduct a Mozart Sinfonia. And, from New York City, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski leads the Juilliard Orchestra in Brahms.