Performance Today®

On this weekend's Performance Today, we'll hear a great American band play a great American symphony. Plus Bruce Adolphe joins us for this week's Piano Puzzler.

Joshua Smith is the principal flutist of the Cleveland Orchestra. In recent years, he and a few friends have been playing classical concerts at a local bar with astonishing results. On Friday's Performance Today, Smith talks about playing Beethoven and more at the Happy Dog in Cleveland.

On Thursday's Performance Today conductor, pianist and candid commentator Bill Eddins joins host Fred Child in the studio to take listeners on a tour of his favorite pieces of classical music. He talks about the unappreciated humor in Beethoven's symphonies, the sly keyboard prowess of Alicia de Larrocha, and reveals what he calls "the sexiest piece of classical music ever written."

On Wednesday's Performance Today, we'll hear a great American band play a great American symphony. Plus Bruce Adolphe joins us for this week's Piano Puzzler.

On Tuesday's Performance Today, pianist Inon Barnatan joins Fred Child at Steinway Hall in New York. They'll talk about the art of using the middle pedal on the piano, and Barnatan will play a flighty piece by Felix Mendelssohn.

When he was young, Nikolaus Harnoncourt played the cello. But he often found himself questioning why the music was performed a certain way. Since he always had his own opinion, Harnoncourt decided to become a conductor. On Monday's Performance Today we'll hear him conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in Mozart's Symphony No. 40.

On this weekend'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.

On Friday's Performance Today we're celebrating Valentine's Day with music and love. We'll hear a pianist in concert last month making a public declaration of love, and a quartet by Robert Schumann featuring a private, secret code of love.

Simone Dinnerstein and Tift Merritt join host Fred Child in the studio to discuss their musical collaboration and to perform several songs from their album Night.