Performance Today®

Every year for the past decade, Chinese pianist Lang Lang has played a solo concert at Carnegie Hall. He's performed a huge range of music, but until recently he had never played any music by Bach. On Friday's Performance Today, we'll hear Lang Lang open a solo concert at Carnegie Hall with Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 1.

On Thursday's Performance Today we'll remember the late great conductor Claudio Abbado with stories and, of course, with music. For a dozen years, Abbado was Principal Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic; coming up we'll hear from a concert he led in Berlin featuring pianist Maurizio Pollini.

At first glance, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky might seem like opposite ends of a musical spectrum. But Stravinsky loved Tchaikovsky's music, and in 1928 he borrowed some of Tchaikovsky's music for his ballet 'The Fairy's Kiss.' The themes are mostly Tchaikovsky's, but the rhythmic energy and wit are pure Stravinsky. Coming up on Wednesday's Performance Today, Alan Gilbert conducts the New York Philharmonic in Stravinsky's musical homage to Tchaikovsky.

On Tuesday's Performance Today, pianist Helene Grimaud discusses finding the delicate balance in music by Mozart. Plus we'll hear her perform Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 with the Chamber Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio.

On the Martin Luther King holiday we'll celebrate Dr. King's legacy with music. Joseph Schwantner's 'New Morning for the World' features inspiring, galvanizing words from Dr. King's speeches. Plus, a musical connection with the legacy of Nelson Mandela. It's our annual King celebration, on Monday's Performance Today.

Rafal Blechacz is a young pianist from Poland who loves to play music by a composer from Poland: Frederic Chopin. We'll hear recently named 2014 Gilmore Artist Rafal Blechacz play Chopin and much more on this weekend's Performance Today.

Benjamin Franklin was born on Jan. 17, 1706. He was a statesman, a scientist, an inventor, and postmaster. He signed the Declaration of Independence. And he also loved music. On Friday's Performance Today, we'll celebrate his birthday by listening to his music and his musical invention - the glass armonica.

When he was 20 years old, American composer Aaron Copland went to Paris; that was where all the exciting new music was happening. He wanted to find a teacher, and he found someone he thought was tremendously inspiring: Nadia Boulanger. Coming up on Thursday's Performance Today, we'll hear from an amazing 1980 interview in which Copland recounts how he found his great teacher. And we'll hear his Clarinet Concerto, from a concert at the Windham Music Festival in upstate New York.

Fritz Kreisler is famous as a 20th century violinist and composer. It's not so well known that when war broke out in 1914, Kreisler volunteered to serve in the Austrian Army and he spent four weeks in the trenches on the Eastern Front. We'll hear the story of Fritz Kreisler's narrow escape from the trenches and a piece he wrote a few years later; his String Quartet in a minor. Plus, news from the Minnesota Orchestra, on Wednesday's Performance Today.