Performance Today®

On today's show, we'll head to Houston to hear the ensemble ROCO play the Overture to the comic opera Jery and Bätely (1872) by Swiss-German composer Ingeborg Bronsart von Schellendorf.

Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine planned their current tour of the U.S. more than two years ago, well before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The concerts took on more meaning as an artistic response to the brutal war imposed on their home country. On today's show, we'll hear them play Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 at a recent concert at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY.

Every week, composer Bruce Adolphe joins us for a musical game: the Piano Puzzler. Bruce re-writes a familiar tune in the style of a great composer, and we get one of our listeners on the phone who tries to guess the hidden tune and the composer whose style Bruce is imitating. Play along with the PT Piano Puzzler on today’s show.

We'll reintroduce you to saxophonist Salvador Flores, one of our 2023 PT Young Artists in Residence, on today's show. Salvador joins Fred Child for music and conversation at our studio in St. Paul.

In Ukrainian, the word "dumka" means "thought." And in music, a dumka is a somewhat dreamlike dance that often comes back to a bittersweet reflection on the sadness of life. We'll hear a dumka by Rebecca Clarke on today's show from a performance at the Geneva Music Festival in Geneva, New York.

If you were to choose one piece of classical music to share with someone to get them hooked, what would it be? Pianist Yefim Bronfman has an opinion on the matter...and we'll hear him play it on today's show. Plus, Bruce Adolphe has this week’s Piano Puzzler!

The Chinese lute, or pipa, has been around for more than two thousand years. On today's show, we'll hear a 21st-century composition for pipa performed by Wu Man and the Lexington Symphony at a concert in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Sergei Rachmaninoff was a young unknown when he met his hero, composer Peter Tchaikovsky, who died only a month later. The very night Rachmaninoff got the news, he began writing a piece in honor of Tchaikovsky. On today's show, we'll hear members of the Seattle Chamber Music Society play the Trio élégiaque No. 2 by Sergei Rachmaninoff.

If you were to choose one piece of classical music to share with someone to get them hooked, what would it be? Pianist Yefim Bronfman has an opinion on the matter...and we'll hear him play it on today's show.