Performance Today®

Violinist Joshua Bell joins Fred Child in the studio for a conversation about his approach to music of the Romantic era. Pianist Matthew Bengtson joins Bell for short pieces by Fritz Kreisler, Tchaikovsky and Pablo de Sarasate.

The turbines at Germany's Heimbach Power Plant no longer generate electricity. But the musicians who perform at the Spannungen Music Festival certainly do. We'll take you to this decommissioned art deco power plant for a Mozart Divertimento by violinist Christian Tetzlaff, violist Tabea Zimmerman and cellist Tanja Tetzlaff.

Conductor Christoph Konig made an unusual choice while leading the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra in Haydn's 103rd Symphony, nicknamed the "Drumroll" Symphony. He downplayed that attention-getting blast of percussion, instead opting for an unsettling distant rumble. See what you think of his take on Haydn when they play it in concert in Fribourg, Switzerland.

We'll go to the Concertgebouw to hear two outstanding performances by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic. First, Jaap van Zweden leads them in Sibelius' Fifth Symphony. Then Roberto Benzi is the conductor for a performance of Debussy's "Three Images for Orchestra."

After years of composing, Antonin Dvorak finally had a hit with his "Slavonic Dances." We'll go to Switzerland's Lucerne Festival to hear a delightful performance of the entire Opus 72 collection. Daniel Harding leads the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.

Violinist Rachel Barton Pine believes that Beethoven's Violin Concerto is not an entirely original piece. In fact, she'll demonstrate that many of its themes showed up earlier in a concerto by Franz Clement, the violinist who premiered Beethoven's concerto. She'll perform some of each with Jose Serebrier and the Royal Philharmonic.

In preparation for Saturday's "Last Night of the Proms," Fred Child chats with SymphonyCast's Brian Newhouse from London. Wea€™ll stay at the Proms for Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony from Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic, and cellist Alban Gerhardt playing Prokofiev's Symphony-Concerto with Ilan Volkov and the BBC Scottish Symphony.

We'll have a Mozart symphony in each hour of today's show. In the first, we'll go to Amsterdam to hear Nikolaus Harnoncourt lead the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in a stirring rendition of the "Haffner" Symphony. And, in our second hour, Hans Graf conducts the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in a performance of Mozart's 25th Symphony in St. Paul.

For several generations of Americans, the first place that they heard classical music was in cartoons. Be it Disney's "Fantasia," Looney Tunes or something fairly fresh like "Wall-E," great music has found its way to our ears while accompanying animation. We'll spend an hour with music made famous by cartoons, celebrating the centennial of the birth of composer Raymond Scott and talking to Lang Lang about how "Tom and Jerry" made him want to become a pianist.

Days after a cease fire was negotiated between Georgia and Russia, conductor Valery Gergiev flew to South Ossetia to lead the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra in a concert in front of Tskhinvali's bomb-damaged parliament building. We'll go there to hear him conduct music from Shostakovich's "Leningrad" Symphony and Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique" Symphony.