Performance Today®

When Alondra de la Parra was growing up in Mexico, she played piano, but she had terrible stage fright. As a conductor, she draws on the seemingly simple advice of a respected mentor: “Be strong.” On today's show, Alondra de la Parra leads the WDR Radio Orchestra in a live concert performance of "Variaciones concertantes" by Alberto Ginastera.

Composer Jim Stephenson grew up watching his father build model trains. They were detailed, realistic models, and each train car had its personality. He was inspired by those vintage model trains when he wrote a piece for the ensemble ROCO. On today's show, hear ROCOmotive, by Jim Stephenson, from a ROCO concert in Houston, Texas.

In printing and publishing, a watermark is a faint design pressed into a piece of paper used to identify the time and place it was created. Composer Caroline Shaw had a poetic version of that idea and composed a piece that references a Beethoven piano concerto. On today's show, hear Jonathan Biss and the Saint Paul Chamber orchestra play Watermark by Caroline Shaw.

Toby Appel is one of the best viola players around, and he is also an excellent chef. Appel spent several years running a restaurant in Santa Fe, and, for a year, he was the personal chef for the artist Georgia O'Keeffe.  Join us today to hear chef Toby Appel and friends play the Phantasy Quintet by Ralph Vaughan Williams, from a concert in Colorado Springs.

Join us for a musical New Year's celebration! We'll usher in the new year with a celebratory Trumpet Concerto by Johann Neruda and sample a bit of musical champagne, courtesy of Johann Strauss Jr. Music for the New Year, on this edition of Performance Today.

The Manhattan skyline, the majesty of the Teton Mountains, and indigenous communities living in the American West. Those are some of the elements that inspired a musical reflection on our nation: American Scene by William Grant Still.

When Maurice Ravel wrote Gaspard de la Nuit, he tried to make it the most difficult piano music ever written... perhaps even unplayable. On today's show, Benjamin Grosvenor plays the unplayable in a concert presented by Capital Region Classical in Schenectady, NY.

Felix Mendelssohn had a close relationship with his older sister, Fanny. So when she died unexpectedly at age 41, Felix was devastated. He said he would never get over her death. On today's show, hear the piece Mendelssohn dedicated to his dear departed sister.

When composer Victoria Kelly was a kid in New Zealand, she watched an animated show featuring an adorable kiwi bird. At the end of each episode, the kiwi ended the show by turning out the lights. Kelly used this memory to compose a piece of music that ultimately helped her say "goodnight" to her ailing mother. On today's show, hear pianist Juho Pohjonen perform Goodnight Kiwi by Victoria Kelly.