Performance Today®

Richard Strauss knew horns. His father Franz was among the great horn players of the day and he often listened to his father rehearse and perform. When Richard Strauss was 18 years old, he wrote a concerto for his father--and exceptionally difficult concerto, no less. On Thursday's Performance Today we'll hear Philip Myers take the solo role with the New York Philharmonic in a performance of a horn concerto for dad.

"Good composers borrow, great composers steal." That quote is often attributed to Igor Stravinsky, one of the most original composers of the 20th century. Even when Stravinsky pilfered musical ideas, though, he made them very much his own. When Stravinsky wrote ballet music in 1919, he lifted tunes from about two centuries earlier, but tweaked them enough to put his own stamp on them. On Wednesday's Performance Today, we'll hear the result: The Pulcinella Suite by Igor Stravinsky from a concert in Cologne, Germany.

In 1908 Maurice Ravel wrote an enchanting piece for solo piano called Ondine or water fairy. Ravel often did orchestral versions of his piano pieces, but not this one. He left it as a piano solo. However, that hasn't stopped others from trying. On Tuesday's Performance Today we'll hear a fascinating musical experiment. The Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra had Louis Lortie play Ravel's solo piano version. Then, without a break, they played a 1990 orchestration of the piece. We'll hear them back to back, just as they were done on stage in Brazil.

Napoleon's defeat inspired two noisy pieces of music. There was Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. But there was also a noisy, impetuous, militant march by Beethoven called Wellington's Victory, one of those rare occasions when the loser's name is more known than the winner. Beethoven's march is not played as often as the Tchaikovsky, but it's a fascinating piece with a curious history. On Monday's Performance Today, we'll hear Wellington's Victory in performance from a concert in Dublin, Ireland.

The 12-member British vocal ensemble Stile Antico joins host Fred Child for a very special performance and conversation. They sing a variety of gorgeous music from the 1500s, including a hymn by Orlando di Lasso, and talk about the legacy of British cathedral choir schools, It's music with a penetrating beauty on Wednesday's Performance Today.

Violinist Rachel Barton Pine says, "there's nothing more fundamental than holding an infant in your arms and rocking them gently to sleep." Classical composers are no different than other parents--singing, soothing, sometimes pleading their children to sleep. But many of them wrote their own lullabies. On Friday's Performance Today, Rachel Barton Pine plays a handful of little-known lullabies by well-known composers. Just in time for Mother's Day.

Doesn't it seem like people cough a lot at classical music concerts? A German behavioral economist recently found that audiences cough twice as much sitting in a concert hall as they do in normal life. On Thursday's Performance Today we'll talk with Professor Andreas Wagener who has measured this concert hall coughing and explored the bigger question: Why?

The 12-member British vocal ensemble Stile Antico joins host Fred Child for a very special performance and conversation. They sing a variety of gorgeous music from the 1500s, including a hymn by Orlando di Lasso, and talk about the legacy of British cathedral choir schools, It's music with a penetrating beauty on Wednesday's Performance Today.

Listen to the young British ensemble sing music from the 1500s.