Performance Today®

English composer Ruth Gipps was born in 1921. Gipps founded two orchestras focusing on music by living composers, and she fought for the place of women among contemporary composers, conductors, and performers until her death in 1999.

Forty years ago, conductor Giovanni Antonini helped launch a musical movement by playing works from 300 years ago as we think they might have been originally played. Antonini and his group, Il Giardino Armonico, are on the way in concert on today's episode of PT.

The Puna de Atacama (Atacama Plateau) region of Argentina and Chile is a dry landscape with tumbleweeds and animals like alpacas, llamas, and vicuñas. It's both rugged and beautiful. Painters often capture the Puna de Atacama in soft pastels or watercolors. In 1934, Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera expressed this place in music. We'll take you to hear 'Impressions of the Puna' by Alberto Ginastera at this year's Festival Mozaic in San Luis Obispo, California.

It's not from England, and it's not a horn, but we call it the English horn. It was invented in Germany and is a close cousin of the oboe. We've got a gorgeous solo for the deceptively named English horn on this episode of Performance Today.

Spanish composer (and virtuoso pianist) Joaquin Rodrigo was blind from age three. He wrote his music in Braille, and his wife Victoria helped translate it to traditional notation. Remarkably, Rodrigo did not play the guitar…yet he wrote one of the world’s most iconic guitar concertos. On today's show, guitarist Jason Vieaux plays Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, backed by the Williamsburg Symphony Orchestra and conductor Michael Butterman.

The world of ballet is filled with images of graceful, colorful birds: Swan Lake. The Firebird. A famous bluebird in Sleeping Beauty. And a ballet about pigeons? On today's show, we'll hear music from The Two Pigeons, a ballet written by French composer Andre Messager in 1886. PLUS, Bruce Adolphe has this week's Piano Puzzler!

In 1933, German composer Paul Frankenburger left Germany and moved to Palestine. He changed his name from Frankenburger to Ben-Haim and later wanted to be remembered not as a German composer but as a Jewish composer of Jewish music. Hear works by Paul Ben-Haim on this episode of Performance Today.

Germaine Tailleferre was determined to be a musician, and her father tried to stop her. She rebelled so completely that she even changed her name and went on to a 70-year career as a composer. We'll hear the String Quartet by French composer Germaine Tailleferre on today's show.

Two decades after he wrote his Negro Folk Symphony, composer William Dawson traveled to West Africa. Based on what he heard there, he revised his music to convey “...the missing elements that were lost when Africans came into bondage outside their homeland." On today's show, hear Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony played by The Orchestra Now with conductor Leon Botstein.