Performance Today®

Our Mahler celebrations continue, one day after Gustav Mahler's 150th birthday. Barbara Haws, archivist of the New York Philharmonic, talks about Mahler's brief time as Music Director of the Philharmonic. (And tells a story about Mahler visiting an opium den in New York. He didn't inhale.) We'll hear a classic New York Philharmonic recording of the Adagietto from Mahler's Symphony No. 5. Plus, Mahler the outdoorsman -- two of his orchestral movements inspired, in part, by flowers. And our series "Music That Matters" returns with a visit to an orchestra of inmates at a women's prison in Alaska.

What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of death? Composer Gustav Mahler, born 150 years ago today, asked the big questions in his work. We'll hear highlights from two recent and extraordinary Mahler concerts. Gustavo Dudamel leads the LA Philharmonic in the final two movements of Mahler's Symphony No. 1, and Franz Welser-Most leads the Cleveland Orchestra in the final two movements of Mahler's Symphony No. 2, the Resurrection Symphony.

Ferdinand Schubert was a packrat...and thank goodness for that. Ferdinand was the brother of composer Franz Schubert. When Robert Schumann came to visit in 1839, Schumann was surprised to find stacks of music lying all around the apartment. Franz Schubert had died a decade earlier, and among the mess, Schumann discovered an unknown masterpiece. It's come to be called the "Great Symphony," Schubert's Symphony No. 9. We'll hear a concert in London. Sir Charles Mackerras conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra.

The young Austrian pianist Till Fellner suffered a debilitating case of tinnitus (a hearing disorder) in 2005. It almost ended his career. But with medical help, he came back, playing even more beautifully than before. Two hundred years earlier, another young German-speaking pianist was devastated when he began losing his hearing. There was no medical cure for him, and Ludwig van Beethoven lived out the rest of his life in silence. In today's show, Fellner plays a Beethoven sonata, from a concert last month in London.

The Master General of the Ordnance told the Comptroller of His Majesty's Fireworks in 1749, that "the King objected to there being any musick, but when I told him the quantity and number of (trumpets and drums) martial musick there was to be, he was better satisfied, and said he hoped there would be no fiddles." George Frideric Handel got wind of that, and left the fiddles out of his Royal Fireworks Music. The Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor Herbert Blomstedt give a performance, in honor of the 4th of July holiday.

The Master General of the Ordnance told the Comptroller of His Majesty's Fireworks in 1749, that "the King objected to there being any musick, but when I told him the quantity and number of (trumpets and drums) martial musick there was to be, he was better satisfied, and said he hoped there would be no fiddles." George Frideric Handel got wind of that, and left the fiddles out of his Royal Fireworks Music. The Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor Herbert Blomstedt give a performance, in honor of the 4th of July holiday.

Pianist Louis Lortie says he always prefers live performances to studio recordings. He says, "There's a spirit, an immediacy that you just don't get in the studio." Louis Lortie plays Beethoven's first piano concerto with spirit and immediacy, along with Kurt Masur and the Cleveland Orchestra. The performance was from the Cleveland Orchestra's annual winter residency in Miami. Plus, hour one is an all-Nordic hour.

Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring" is such a perfect marriage of music and theme that he must have had the name in mind all the while he was writing it. Right? Wrong. Turns out, Copland attached a name to the ballet only at the last minute. We'll hear Copland himself tell the story, from a 1980 interview. The Swiss Italian Orchestra gives a performance of Copland's greatest hit, in concert in Lugano, Switzerland.

Hour one features two musical punctuations. Richard Strauss' opera, "Capriccio," asks which is more moving - poetry or music? It ends with a question mark, leaving the audience wondering which of two suitors a woman will choose: the poet or the composer. And Wilhelm Stenhammar tacked a big exclamation point onto the title of his jubilant "Excelsior!" In hour two, music based on the works of William Shakespeare: Henry Purcell's "The Fairy Queen" and Erich Korngold's "Much Ado About Nothing."

Is it a stupendous work of art, a shameless piece of self-promotion, or a mockery of the music business? Maybe it's all three. "Ein Heldenleben,""A Hero's Life," by (and about) Richard Strauss. Strauss told a friend "I don't see why I shouldn't write a symphony about myself, I find myself as interesting as Napoleon." Whether you take the grandiose plot seriously, or see it as Strauss poking fun at his critics, it's an astonishing and entertaining piece. Bernard Haitink conducts the Chicago Symphony, in concert at Orchestra Hall in downtown Chicago.