Performance Today®

Composer Bruce Adolphe joins us weekly for a musical game, our Piano Puzzler. Bruce re-writes a familiar tune in the style of a great composer. 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 this episode of Performance Today.

A friend of pianist Gilles Vonsattel convinced him to take a chance and learn a relatively unknown but very demanding piece by Austrian composer Ludwig Thuille. It was a challenge, but in the end, he was glad he went with his friend's judgment. On today's show, we'll hear Gilles Vonsattel and the St. Lawrence String Quartet play Thuille's Piano Quintet No. 2 at a concert in Charleston, South Carolina.

When an international cello soloist couldn't travel halfway around the world due to Covid travel restrictions, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra turned to one of their own. Join us today to hear the NZSO's Principal Cellist Andrew Joyce do more than "fill in" at an NZSO performance in Wellington, New Zealand.

Composer Bruce Adolphe joins us weekly for a musical game, our Piano Puzzler. Bruce re-writes a familiar tune in the style of a great composer. 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 this episode of Performance Today.

In the Roaring 20s, composer William Walton and poet Edith Sitwell created a playful work called 'Façade: An Entertainment.' And according to conductor JoAnn Falletta, the title says it all. She says, "It's not something to worry about. It's something to just be charmed by." Hear highlights from Façade on today's episode of Performance Today.

Conductor Delyana Lazarova calls herself a "musical migrant." She was born in Bulgaria, lives in England, and conducts orchestras all around the world. On today's show, Lazarova conducts the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra in a performance of "Night," a symphonic poem by Bulgarian composer Marin Goleminov.

We're celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Piano Puzzler! Bruce Adolphe joins Fred Child in the studio to discuss the evolution of our weekly musical game over the past two decades, AND Bruce also has some special "treats" to share with us.

It's fair to say that Robert Schumann was impressed when he heard Schubert's first piano trio. Schumann wrote: "..the troubles of our human existence disappear...and the whole world is fresh and bright again." Can there be a better review than that? On today's show, join us for uplifting music by Franz Schubert, his Piano Trio No. 1.

Gao Hong grew up in China but has lived in Minnesota for about 30 years. Recently, she's been writing music combining her pipa (Chinese lute) with Western ensembles. We’ll hear a great example on today’s show: Nostalgia, by Gao Hong, for pipa, clarinet, cello, and piano.