Performance Today®

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.

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."

Among our offerings today are a Vivaldi/Celtic combination, flutist James Galway playing music of Hamilton Harty, and a bit of "Danny Boy" from the U.S. Marine Band. And Barry Douglas is both soloist and conductor for a performance of Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto with Camerata Ireland.

We'll have a couple of performances from the lively Philly classical scene on the show today. First, pianist Ignat Solzhenitsyn plays a Brahms Scherzo at a Curtis Institute alumni recital. Then, the East Coast Chamber Orchestra performs Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings.

We'll have a couple of performances from the lively Philly classical scene on the show today. First, pianist Ignat Solzhenitsyn plays a Brahms Scherzo at a Curtis Institute alumni recital. Then, the East Coast Chamber Orchestra performs Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings.

When it comes to playing cadenzas, pianist Robert Levin doesn't believe in doing it by the book. He improvises them whenever he performs a concerto. Hear what he came up with Dallas when he plays Mozart's 24th with Claus Peter Flor and the Dallas Symphony.

Kurt Masur isn't the retiring sort. But, at the age of 80, he's giving up the last of his full-time conducting jobs, the position of music director with the French National Orchestra. Here's an opportunity to hear him lead that ensemble in a work that echoes with triumph, despite the fact that Schumann was trying to stave off mental illness while he wrote it.