Performance Today®

When Moliere's comedy, "The Bourgeois Gentleman," premiered in 1670, Jean-Baptiste Lully not only wrote the music... he acted in it, too. Almost two-and-a-half centuries later, Lully pulled another cameo when some of his themes for that production showed up in a suite by Richard Strauss inspired by the same play. We'll head to Hanover, Germany, to hear Eiji Oue conduct the North German Radio Philharmonic.

You most often find flutist Emmanuel Pahud in front of an orchestra... or leading the flute section of the Berlin Philharmonic. Pianist Yefim Bronfman is usually performing a concerto with an orchestra or playing a solo recital in one of the world's great concert halls. Today, they team up to play an intimate and involving Brahms sonata at Boston's Jordan Hall.

We're broadcasting from Los Angeles today, kicking off a week that will feature a performance a day by the L.A. Philharmonic, as well as conversations with music director Esa-Pekka Salonen and some of the orchestra's musicians. Today, Salonen leads them in Haydn's "Bear" Symphony and a piece by Alexander Mossolov at Disney Hall.

Bartok's Second Violin Concerto - a monumental, yet relatively unknown work - was written for the Hungarian virtuoso Zoltan Szekely, in 1936. But it's been gaining favor as one of the newest mountains to climb for today's soloists, including Leila Josefowicz. This past weekend she played it with the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Gustavo Dudamel conducting. That performance from Walt Disney Concert Hall is featured on today's Performance Today.

Paul Galbraith plays his classical guitar in an unusual manner - more in the position of a cello than a guitar - and what he creates is some marvelous music. He drops by our Maud Moon Weyerhaeuser Studio in St. Paul for the first half of a two-part conversation that features music by Mozart, Lennox Berkeley and Bach.

Dmitri Shostakovich thought Robert Schumann's lone cello concerto to be a bit rough around the edges. So he cleaned it up with a new arrangement. We'll hear it performed by cellist Alexander Ivashkin at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. He's joined by conductor Alexander Lazarev and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic.

We're broadcasting from Los Angeles today. And this week's "Performance Today" will feature several performances by the L.A. Philharmonic at Disney Hall. Today, Paavo Jarvi leads the orchestra in the final three movements of Sergei Rachmaninoff's very dramatic Symphony No. 2.

We're broadcasting from Los Angeles today, kicking off a week that will feature a performance a day by the L.A. Philharmonic, as well as conversations with music director Esa-Pekka Salonen and some of the orchestra's musicians. Today, Salonen leads them in Haydn's "Bear" Symphony and a piece by Alexander Mossolov at Disney Hall.

The classical music writer for the New Yorker magazine reads from his best-selling book, "The Rest is Noise," and talks about Stravinsky before we hear Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic play music from "The Rite of Spring."

On the 40th anniversary of his death, we'll honor the civil rights leader with performances by gospel great Mahalia Jackson, the Atlanta Symphony, soprano Measha Brueggergosman and the Emerson String Quartet. We'll also have reminiscences from King's friend and colleague, Andrew Young, as well as a Joseph Schwantner piece inspired by King, narrated by Vernon Jordan and performed by Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony.