Performance Today®

She's definitely not your aunt Ethel. Not stodgy, not conservative. Not set in her ways. She's actually a string quartet named ETHEL, whose members are dedicated to making exciting music that spans almost every genre. The members of ETHEL dropped by our studios recently for an interview and performance. We heard part one yesterday; today is part two.

The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition comes around once every four years, just like the Olympics. Contestants prepare every bit as much as their athlete counterparts. And the stakes are just as high. The competition takes place this spring, but today we'll be hearing from one of the qualifying rounds. Pianist Spencer Myer performs selections from Debussy's Preludes in New York City.

Chilly St. Paul, Minnesota, hosted a hot event last month, the International Chamber Orchestra Festival. The city's resident group, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, was joined by several other chamber orchestras for a month-long festival. We'll hear music from one of those concerts on today's show. The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment performs a Mozart divertimento and a sinfonia by C.P.E. Bach.

Arnold Schoenberg loved Brahms' first piano quartet, but hated how it was usually played. The pianist was always too loud, covering up the strings. He fixed the problem by rewriting the whole piece for symphony orchestra, and ditching the pesky piano altogether. We'll hear Schoenberg's arrangement today, played by Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Ivan Fischer conducts.

We all hear with our ears, but there's a small minority of people who seem to hear with their eyes too. They see colors when they hear music. It's called synesthesia. Hour one of today's show is all about the phenomenon, featuring interviews with synesthetes and the scientists who have studied them, plus music by synesthetic composers.

Cellist Alban Gerhardt was used to shutting out the audience. He always plays with earplugs, and used to perform with his eyes closed. But recently, he decided he needed to engage the audience a little more, to create a more emotionally honest performance. He's working on keeping his eyes open, although he still won't part with the earplugs. We'll hear Gerhardt today, performing the Dvorak Cello Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. We'll celebrate a day early by featuring everything from a lovestruck, 17-year-old Shostakovich to the mature, heartbreaking love story between composer Peter Lieberson and his late wife, mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. Tune in for great performances from around the country, in honor of the day of love.

Today is the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, a great man who inspired greatness in others. Today we'll take a look at some of the music that Lincoln inspired, from Aaron Copland's stirring "Lincoln Portrait" (featuring our own Fred Child as narrator) to tributes by Paul Hindemith and Robert Russell Bennett. We'll also feature a performance from New York City's Lincoln Center, named for the 16th president of the United States.

Ever since pianist Jonathan Biss was eight years old, he's been madly in love with Mozart's 22nd piano concerto. It was his favorite piece. He listened to it so often, his cassette tape of it broke. (Remember cassettes?) On today's show, Jonathan Biss performs Mozart's masterpiece with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at New York's Carnegie Hall.

If you sat through Richard Wagner's four-opera "Ring" cycle start to finish, it would take close to a day. It's tough to break that down into bite-sized portions, but there are a few "Ring" excerpts that make their way into the concert hall. On today's show, we'll hear orchestral excerpts from the final opera in the cycle, "Gotterdammerung," or "The Twilight of the Gods," featuring Simon Rattle and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic.