Performance Today®

Conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin believes that the Symphony No. 5 by Dmitri Shostakovich is both a cry and a confession; it is music that has always spoken to the most intimate part of his soul. On Thursday's Performance Today, we'll hear Nezet-Seguin lead the Philadelphia Orchestra in a concert performance of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 at Carnegie Hall.

On Wednesday's Performance Today, we'll go to a concert in Cardiff, Wales, to hear a rarely-played American gem: the jazzy Symphony No. 2 by composer Randall Thompson. Plus composer Bruce Adolphe joins us with this week's musical game, our Piano Puzzler.

When he was 17 years old, pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk was in a terrible car accident: part of his skull was crushed and he was in a coma. Now he's fully recovered and back on the concert scene, and on Tuesday's Performance Today we'll hear from a recent concert he gave in Fort Lauderdale.

American pianist Richard Goode is thoughtful, precise, and introverted, with a smart and goofy sense of humor: all of which makes him perfect for music by Mozart. On Monday's Performance Today, Goode joins Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a performance Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20.

On this weekend's Performance Today, composer Bruce Adolphe joins us with this week's Piano Puzzler. Plus we'll go to Geneva for a concert from a remarkable venue, located in the middle of the river that runs through the city.

On the day of the Opening Ceremonies of the Winter Games we'll hear from several musicians taking part in the grand opening in Sochi, including pianist Denis Matsuev, violist Yuri Bashmet, and conductor Valery Gergiev. Plus, an Olympic theme by Dmitri Shostakovich. Music for and about the Olympics, on Friday's Performance Today.

When she was a teenager, Clara Wieck loved to write music. A day before her 21st birthday, Clara Wieck married a man who was a composer himself - Robert Schumann. She wrote a few more pieces in her 30s, but for the most part she gave up composition. Coming up on Thursday's Performance Today, a concert performance of the Piano Concerto that young Clara wrote before she was Clara Schumann.

What is a composition? Recently, pianist Orion Weiss listened very carefully to a recording of a piano improvisation that Keith Jarrett performed in 1984. He then wrote it down note for note, with the intent of performing it himself. On Wednesday's Performance Today we'll hear Weiss playing Keith Jarrett's improvisation/composition in concert in Seattle.

As a young composer Arvo Part wrote complex, aggressively modern music. Eventually he began to feel despair over that style of writing, so he stopped composing and spent several years listening to medieval music. He returned to composition a changed man, and his subsequent music had a completely different sound. On Tuesday's Performance Today we'll hear Fratres, one of the first pieces Arvo Part wrote after his musical conversion.