Performance Today®

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.

Conductor Daniel Barenboim formed the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra with young musicians from several Middle Eastern countries. The group performed an historic concert in the Palestinian city of Ramallah on the West Bank, and we'll go there to hear performances of a Mozart Sinfonia Concertante and some of Sir Edward Elgar's "Enigma" Variations.

The symphonies of Shostakovich are powerful musical testaments to a creative life lived under the burden of an oppressive government. And a deep understanding of that comes through in this exceptionally powerful performance of the third and fourth movements. Conductor Yuri Temirkanov leads the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra in concert in Birmingham, England.