Performance Today®

Beethoven's Eroica Symphony is a monumental work. And on Thursday's Performance Today, we'll hear it from a monumentally beautiful place; Festival Mozaic in San Luis Obispo, right between the ocean and the mountains.

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.

Mozart wrote hundreds of pieces that are delightful and charming. But several dozen of his works are so expressive, so riveting, that they're masterpieces. On Tuesday's Performance Today, we'll hear one such masterpiece: Mozart's Symphony No. 39.

Johannes Brahms never married. As a young man he wrote music about feeling free, but lonely. On Monday's Performance Today, we'll hear Brahms' Symphony No. 3, and we'll show you how he put a secret message in the music about feeling free and happy.

According to conductor Nicholas McGegan, Frederick the Great used to brew his coffee in a very special way. Instead of mere water, his morning java was made with...leftover champagne. How would that taste? Fred finds out on this weekend's Performance Today, when he joins McGegan for a very unique cup of joe at the Aspen Music Festival.

Over the course of four bloody months in 1916, more than a million soldiers died at the Battle of the Somme. This Friday marks the 100th anniversary of the death of George Butterworth, a young composer in the British Army. In his honor, we'll take a look back through music written by men who served in the First World War.

Cellist Shannon Hayden has always planned for a life in the arts.

Pianist Stephen Hough remembers the terrible car accident that nearly ended his life with crystal clarity. On Thursday's Performance Today, Hough discusses facing mortality and returning to the beauty of this world.

The Aspen Music Festival appears utterly graceful. But, as Chief Piano Technician Peter Sumner puts it, "it's a bit like a duck swimming on a pond; all you see is the duck gliding across, but underneath everything is paddling like crazy." On Wednesday's Performance Today, Sumner gives us a behind-the-scenes peek at what it's like to maintain the Festival's 200 pianos.