American Public Media’s Performance Today® is America’s most popular classical music radio program and a winner of the 2014 Gabriel Award for artistic achievement. The show is broadcast on hundreds of public radio stations across the country, including at 1 p.m. central weekdays on Minnesota Public Radio. More information about our stations can be found at APM Distribution.
Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 begins with the most famous four notes in music, and then continues on an epic thirty minute journey from darkness to light. On Wednesday's Performance Today, we'll hear Andres Orozco-Estrada lead the Houston Symphony in concert in Beethoven's Fifth.
During a trip down the Nile, French composer Camille Saint-Saens was captivated by an old Nubian song. In fact, he was so inspired by the tune that he transformed it into a piano concerto. On Tuesday's Performance Today, we'll hear pianist Stephen Hough and the Nashville Symphony play that very piece; Saint-Saens' Egyptian Concerto.
When Carl Nielsen's Symphony No. 1 premiered in 1894, one critic said it was "ruthless but innocent - like a child playing with dynamite." On Monday's Performance Today, we'll hear Nielsen's dangerously fun symphony from a concert at the Aspen Music Festival.
Trolls, goblins, and gnomes. On Friday's Performance Today, we'll join them all in the Hall of the Mountain King, when we hear Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite performed at the Artosphere Festival. Then, we'll head to New York to hear two special pieces: one old, one new...but both blue.
Trolls, goblins, and gnomes - we'll join them all in the Hall of the Mountain King. On Friday's Performance Today, we'll hear Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite; plus, pianist Joyce Yang plays Grieg's Piano Concerto in concert at the Aspen Festival.
It's not every orchestral concert that gets covered by news outlets around the world -- but this was the first American orchestra to play in Cuba since the restoration of diplomatic ties with the U.S. On Thursday's Performance Today, we'll hear from the Minnesota Orchestra's historic concert in Havana, Cuba.
Every week on our Piano Puzzler, composer Bruce Adolphe re-writes a familiar tune in the style of a great composer. Then, one of our listeners calls in and tries to guess two things: the tune, and the composer whose style Bruce is mimicking. Play along with our weekly musical game, on Wednesday's Performance Today.
Danish composer Carl Nielsen is not known for his string quartets. His countrymen, the Danish String Quartet, think it's time for that to change. On Tuesday's Performance Today, we'll hear them play Nielsen's Quartet No. 2; a piece as sweet and quirky as the composer himself.
Aaron Copland was from Brooklyn. He was a city slicker who captured -- and to a certain degree, created -- what we think of as the sound of the old American West. On Monday's Performance Today, we'll hear selections from his cowboy ballet, "Billy the Kid."
