Performance Today®

At age seventeen, composer Kayhan Kalhor left his home in Iran, fled for safety, and walked over two thousand five hundred miles to Italy alone, with just a small backpack and his beloved kamancheh (spiked fiddle). We'll hear music Kalhor wrote for Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble on today’s show.

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.

Like any good story, music can express many emotions: moments of tenderness, passion, fear, and frustration. All those emotions shared without a single word...that's the power of music. Today we'll hear Transfigured Night by Arnold Schoenberg from a concert presented by the Kingston Chamber Music Festival in Philadelphia.

Pierre Jalbert wrote a piece for Carol Wincenc to celebrate her 50th anniversary season. He wove little messages into the music, honoring Carol and the number 50. On today's show, Carol Wincenc and the Escher String Quartet perform the world premiere of "Air in Motion" by Pierre Jalbert from a concert at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.

On today's show, we'll introduce you to cellist Leland Ko in our latest installment of the 2023 PT Young Artists in Residence series. Leland and pianist Adria Ye join Fred Child for music and conversation at our studio in St. Paul.

Pianist Margaryta Golovko was born and raised in Ukraine. She has expressed her love of her home country this past year by playing as much Ukrainian music as possible. On today’s show, we’ll take you to a concert in Moldova to hear Margaryta Golovko play the “Slavic Concerto” by Ukrainian composer Boris Lyatoshynsky.

In 2019, there was a ceremony in Iceland to memorialize the Ok glacier that had melted away. A humble copper plaque was installed in its former spot, and composer Marcus Maroney wrote a piece inspired by the inscription on that plaque. On today's show, ROCO performs Marcus Maroney's ‘OK, Goodbye’ from a concert in Houston.

What can you learn about a person from an object that's important to them? You can learn where and when it came from, but you can also discover the memories and people connected with this object. That's the idea behind a new piece you'll hear on today's show: "Seen" by Nathalie Joachim, played by the Imani Winds at a concert presented by Chamber Music Northwest.

Franz Schubert was shorter than most people, a little self-conscious, and socially awkward. His friends affectionately called him "Schwammerl," the little mushroom. Schubert shared himself with his friends through music that many of us still treasure two centuries later. On today’s show, we’ll hear pianist Orli Shaham play a sonata by Schubert at the Kaufman Music Center in New York City.