Performance Today®

"It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." Those opening lines from Dickens'"A Tale of Two Cities" are burned into almost everyone's consciousness. But what about the rest of the book? Who can quote that? In today's show, we'll have another great opening line, the sunrise from "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Everyone knows it from the film "2001: A Space Odyssey." Plus, we'll hear the part no one remembers. Gustavo Dudamel leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the complete half-hour tone poem by Richard Strauss.

Conductor Simon Rattle joins us to introduce the Symphony No. 2 by Johannes Brahms. Rattle says "this is a work where real unalloyed joy comes out, and that, in all of Brahms' output, is fairly rare." Rattle also weighs in on Brahms' gruff, very German sense of humor. And we'll go to a concert in Berlin, with Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in the complete symphony.

The young Sergei Prokofiev was fed up with critics who thought he could only write crunchy, avant-garde music. So he threw them a musical curve ball, his "Classical" symphony, written in a Haydnesque style. He called it "a challenge to tease the geese." David Robertson leads the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Prokofiev's First Symphony, in concert at the iconic Opera House in Sydney, Australia.

Would you rather be married to someone who does exactly what you do for a living? Someone who knows every little inside joke, every nuance and intricacy of your profession? Or would you rather be with someone who does something completely different, who can open up a new world to you? In 2010, Orion Weiss and Anna Polonsky decided that a two-piano household was a good thing, and they got married. In today's show, Polonsky and Weiss share how they balance music and marriage, and they play the Poulenc Concerto for Two Pianos in Buffalo.

The young Sergei Prokofiev was fed up with critics who thought he could only write crunchy, avant-garde music. So he threw them a musical curve ball, his "Classical" symphony, written in a Haydnesque style. He called it "a challenge to tease the geese." David Robertson leads the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Prokofiev's First Symphony, in concert at the iconic Opera House in Sydney, Australia.

He was an obscure dead composer, but Mozart loved his work. He even arranged some of the old guy's keyboard pieces for string quartet. In today's show, the Orion String Quartet performs some of those curious Mozart arrangements. And that nearly-forgotten composer? That would be Johann Sebastian Bach.

It just wouldn't be New Year's Day without some Strauss from Vienna. Today, we get the whole Strauss family. Franz Welser-Most conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in works by Eduard, Josef, and Johann, Jr., from the annual New Year's Day concert in Vienna. Plus, we'll look ahead to several important milestones we'll be celebrating in 2013. Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner both turn 200 this year.

If you joined us during the past year, you know that 2012 was a big year on Performance Today. We paid visits to a number of big summer music festivals and met some of the stars of tomorrow there. Inaugurated a PT Young Artist-in-Residence series. Observed several important composer anniversaries. And all year long we brought you memorable performances from concert halls around the country and around the world. Join us in closing out 2012 today with festive music, including the overture to "Die Fledermaus," by the Waltz King, Johann Strauss, Jr.

In a hall that doesn't even feature a real pipe organ, Andrew Davis and the New York Philharmonic still managed to pull out all the stops in a performance of Camille Saint-Saens' Symphony Number 3, the Organ Symphony. Kent Tritle, the New York Philharmonic's resident organist, had to make do with an electronic instrument. We'll hear their performance, from a concert at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City.