Performance Today®

Critics have been raving about the Minnesota Orchestra's recordings of the Beethoven symphonies. Find out what's so special about conductor Osmo Vanska's take on Beethoven when they perform the Second Symphony at a concert in Minneapolis.

New Year's Eve is a big deal in Berlin. An estimated million people converge upon the center of the city every year for a celebration. And you can feel that sense of excitement in a New Year's Eve performance of Modest Mussorgsky's masterpiece by Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. Even if you've heard this piece many times before, we think that you'll find this a particularly thrilling interpretation.

Since their Proms debut in London last summer, Gustavo Dudamel and Venezuela's Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra have been the talk of the classical music world. There's so much fire, technical skill and interpretive flair in their performances that it's hard to believe that they're a youth orchestra. Hear what the buzz is about when they perform one of Beethoven's most emotion-packed symphonies in Boston.

On Tuesday, the orchestra performed an historic concert in Pyongyang, North Korea, becoming part of the largest American delegation to visit that country since the early 1950's. We'll have excerpts from that concert, including Lorin Maazel conducting Gershwin's "An American in Paris." And we'll talk with WNYC's John Schaefer, who was at the concert.

Clara Schumann refused to publish her husband Robert's one and only violin concerto because she thought it was the music of a mad man. Just a year after he wrote it, Schumann was institutionalized in a sanitarium. But violinist Renaud Capucon hears great pain, beauty and triumph in the music. He'll talk about this lonely concerto before we hear him perform it in Berlin with Hans Graf and the German Symphony Orchestra, as our week of violin concertos continues.

We'll spend much of today's show at Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. First, we'll hear the Los Angeles Philharmonic's concert master, Martin Chalifour, perform Erich Korngold's Violin Concerto with Jonathan Nott and the orchestra. Then Paavo Jarvi leads the L.A. Philharmonic in Rachmaninoff's "Vocalise" and the second half of his Second Symphony.

Since their Proms debut in London last summer, Gustavo Dudamel and Venezuela's Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra have been the talk of the classical music world. There's so much fire, technical skill and interpretive flair in their performances that it's hard to believe that they're a youth orchestra. Hear what the buzz is about when they perform one of Beethoven's most emotion-packed symphonies in Boston.

If you love the sound of a solo violin, then this is the week for you to listen to PT. All week, we'll be presenting recent concert performances of great violin concertos, starting with one by the legendary virtuoso and showman, Niccolo Paganini. At a concert in Hamburg, Germany, Hungarian violinist Kristof Barati offers a fiery interpretation of Paganini's Second with Alexander Mickelthwate and the North German Radio Philharmonic.

Rachmaninoff was a pianist's pianist. And the pieces he composed can be spectacular showcases for a pianist's abilities. Among Rachmaninoff's four piano concertos, the second and third are heard fairly frequently. Far more rare is the fourth, but Stephen Hough tackles it at the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas.