American Public Media’s Performance Today® is America’s most popular classical music radio program and a winner of the 2014 Gabriel Award for artistic achievement. The show is broadcast on hundreds of public radio stations across the country, including at 1 p.m. central weekdays on Minnesota Public Radio. More information about our stations can be found at APM Distribution.
O.K., we don't have them playing together. But cellist Yo-Yo Ma will talk about developing his own style before he plays the Dvorak concerto with Hans Graf and the Houston Symphony. And pianist Lang Lang joins Fred Child in the studio for some conversation and a Chinese folk tune.
Pianist Stephen Kovacevich will describe the pain involved in Beethoven's First Piano Concerto before playing it with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. And Boris Berezovsky tackles two of Leopold Godowsky's extremely demanding Chopin transcriptions in Suffolk, England.
Conductor Nicholas McGegan will take you on a colorful guided tour of Haydn's 92nd Symphony before leading the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in a performance of the work in St. Paul. Then we'll travel south to Northfield, where the male chorus, Cantus, will sing Thomas Tallis'"Lamentations of Jeremiah."
We'll mark the 323rd anniversary of the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach with performances of two of his greatest works. In Richmond, Virginia, Jos van Veldhoven leads the Netherlands Bach Society in the Kyrie and Credo from the Mass in B Minor. Then Sir John Eliot Gardiner talks about the man behind the music before conducting the Monteverdi Choir, London Oratory Junior Choir and English Baroque Soloists in excerpts from a work written for Good Friday, the "St. Matthew Passion."
Alan Gilbert is the next music director of the New York Philharmonic. But we'll catch up with him on the opposite coast, as he leads the L.A. Philharmonic in a suite from Richard Strauss' opera, "Der Rosenkavalier," a work that lilts with waltzes reminiscent of another Strauss.
Faure was an organist who played plenty of funerals. So, when he set out to compose a requiem, he wanted to do something different, create a work more concerned with comfort than grief. We'll have excerpts from a concert performance in Bellingham, Washington, by Michael Palmer and the Bellingham Festival Orchestra and Chorus.
Conductor Nicholas McGegan will take you on a colorful guided tour of Haydn's 92nd Symphony before leading the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in a performance of the work in St. Paul. Then we'll travel south to Northfield, where the male chorus, Cantus, will sing Thomas Tallis'"Lamentations of Jeremiah."
Among our offerings today are a Vivaldi/Celtic combination, flutist James Galway playing music of Hamilton Harty, and a bit of "Danny Boy" from the U.S. Marine Band. And Barry Douglas is both soloist and conductor for a performance of Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto with Camerata Ireland.
We'll have a couple of performances from the lively Philly classical scene on the show today. First, pianist Ignat Solzhenitsyn plays a Brahms Scherzo at a Curtis Institute alumni recital. Then, the East Coast Chamber Orchestra performs Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings.
