Performance Today®

For a concert at this spring's Lucerne Festival, conductor Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony devoted the evening to music from the operas of Richard Wagner. We'll drop in to hear a pair of great orchestral showcases: "Siegfried's Funeral March" from "Gotterdammerung," and the Overture to "Tannhauser."

Some young pianists may be fleet of fingers, but there's something special about a veteran player who can reach into the depths of a piece and come up with fresh insights from a familiar work. Maurizio Pollini does that when he performs Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24, conducting the Vienna Philharmonic from the keyboard at the Musikverein in Vienna.

The lush sound of the Philadelphia Orchestra is an ideal fit for Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. We'll go to the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia to hear Christoph Eschenbach conduct the final three movements of this emotionally turbulent masterpiece.

This weekend on PT violinist Corey Cerovsek and pianist Wendy Chen perform a Saint-Saens sonata in Athens, Georgia. And Jeffrey Kahane leads the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in Haydn's 98th Symphony in Westwood, California.

After we hear William Walton's musical evocation of this etching by Thomas Rowlandson, Fred Child sits down in our Maud Moon Weyerhaeuser Music Studio for a chat with pianist Rudolf Buchbinder. He's a lover of the live experience: Almost all of his recordings are from concerts. But he'll break with form by playing Schubert and Johann Strauss in the studio. Then we'll go to Amsterdam to hear him perform music from Brahms' Second Piano Concerto.

There's a new PBS documentary about conductor Valery Gergiev called "Maestro." We'll meet up with the maestro in Amsterdam, where he'll lead the Rotterdam Philharmonic in Mozart's final (and arguably greatest) symphony, the "Jupiter." We'll also go to a recital in London, where the all-star team of violinist Joshua Bell and cellist Steven Isserlis performs some duets by Reinhold Gliere.

On May 1st, 1968, a group of six choral scholars from King's College in Cambridge, England, performed their first concert. On May 1st of this year, the King's Singers performed a 40th anniversary concert at King's College, Cambridge, inviting their alumni and the King's College Choir to join them. We'll go there to hear them sing works by Jan Sweelinck, Max Reger and Bob Chilcott.

This outstanding pianist joined conductor Thomas Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra on their recent U.S. tour, offering critically acclaimed performances of Beethoven's First Piano Concerto. We'll join them at Cleveland's Severance Hall, where they delivered a powerful interpretation.

The disparate moods of Memorial Day - celebrating the unofficial start of summer and honoring those who have died for our country - are reflected in two pieces by Samuel Barber. The Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet plays his "Summer Music" in Athens, Georgia. And the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra offers his Adagio for Strings in Denver.

This weekend on PT, we'll have an hour on poetry, featuring a conversation with mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and a tribute to Federico Garcia Lorca. Then we'll have pianist and poet Stephen Hough talking about what words can do that music can't, and vice versa. He also plays pieces by Emmanuel Chabrier and Mendelssohn in Denver.