Performance Today Features

Leonard Slatkin talks about strikes, lockouts and how an orchestra recovers from bitter contract negotiations.

Top Score podcast host Emily Reese talks about the latest in music composed for video games.

Music writer and critic remembers the legendary Glenn Gould.

Violinist Robert McDuffie talks with Fred Child about the future of music education.

It's September, and the school year is starting up, so here's a classical quiz.

When Andrew Staupe was a child he spent a lot of time onstage, not as a musician, but as an actor and dancer. One day he heard another performer playing a Chopin nocturne on a piano backstage and was transfixed. Today he's a doctoral candidate in piano performance at Rice University and a finalist in the American Pianists Association Classical Fellowship Award. Staupe joins host Fred Child in the studio to talk about life on the stage and play music by Debussy, Mendelssohn and Christopher Walczak.

Innovative American composer John Cage would have celebrated his 100th birthday this year. One of his most influential pieces is called 4'33." PT host Fred Child spoke with author Kyle Gann about how this relatively short piece of music changed everything that came after it.

Even though she's only 9 years old, Elizabeth Aoki was one of the standouts at the 2012 Aspen Music Festival and School. You can hear this extraordinary young violinist as she gives her first-ever interview and plays part of a Wieniawski concerto, a piece that's challenging for soloists of any age.

Irish pianist John O'Conor is on the piano faculty at the Aspen Music Festival and School. And he's a big champion of the music of fellow Irishman John Field. O'Conor shares the story of John Field, and plays nocturnes by Field and Alexander Scriabin.

As a young man, composer John Harbison was passionate about both jazz and classical music. At the time, he felt he had to choose between the two, and picked classical. Times have changed, and nowadays he's comfortable combining the two in his music. Hear Fred Child's onstage interview with John Harbison at the 2012 Aspen Festival, along with Harbison's performance of his own music.