The Piano Puzzler

‘Performance Today’ has selected performer and composer Jessie Montgomery as the 2025 Classical Woman of the Year. This annual award recognizes women who have made significant contributions to the classical music art form and have inspired our listeners. Find out more!

In the spring of 1968, the late conductor Paul Freeman ran into Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Atlanta airport. Their brief conversation was one he never forgot. On this episode of Performance Today, hear about that life-changing encounter in our musical celebration of King's life and legacy.

Gabriela Ortiz's vibrant orchestral work 'Kauyumari' is named after the spiritual guide of Mexico's Huichol people. The piece uses a recurring folk melody to evoke healing and ecstasy. Today, we’ll take you to a concert in Turin, Italy, to hear how Ortiz transforms traditional sounds into a joyful journey through what she calls the "invisible realm."

In 2015, English composer Anna Clyne wrote an orchestral piece inspired by the poetry of Juan Ramón Jiménez and Charles Baudelaire, evoking a world of "melancholy waltz and languid vertigo." Join us today for a sonic journey through Anna Clyne's powerful orchestral work, This Midnight Hour. 

Today, we explore the music of harpist and composer Jacqueline Kerrod. Kerrod began her musical journey enchanted by Mozart, but she now boldly straddles the worlds of classical and experimental music. Hear the world premiere of Kerrod’s own composition, Bumping Along, a piece that highlights the powerful, dramatic, and sometimes "gnarly" possibilities of the harp.

Johannes Brahms composed the powerful opening movement of his Piano Concerto No. 1 amid great personal turmoil. The concerto reflects Brahms’s complex emotions about the decline of his mentor, Robert Schumann. On today's show, pianist Yefim Bronfman joins conductor Donald Runnicles and the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra for a performance of this moving piece.

Composer Carlos Simon grew up in the African American Pentecostal Church, where lively worship services featured singing, dancing, and sometimes speaking in tongues. Today, we're highlighting Simon's 'Four Black American Dances'—music inspired by his experiences in the church and community where he was raised.

Gabriela Ortiz's vibrant orchestral work 'Kauyumari' is named after the spiritual guide of Mexico's Huichol people. The piece uses a recurring folk melody to evoke healing and ecstasy. Today, we’ll take you to a concert in Turin, Italy, to hear how Ortiz transforms traditional sounds into a joyful journey through what she calls the "invisible realm."

By the time Mieczyslaw Weinberg composed his second symphony, he had already escaped the Nazis twice. Soon after, he would face the horrors of Stalin's regime directly. However, in 1945, he was relatively safe in Moscow thanks to his friendship with Dmitri Shostakovich. On today's show, we'll hear Weinberg's Symphony No. 2 performed live at the 2025 Salzburg Festival in Austria.

Composer Miguel del Aguila imagined a meeting between two characters: one is Justice, the blindfolded woman holding scales and a sword, and the other is Law, the man holding a book and a gavel. We'll hear Imani Winds play the world premiere of Miguel del Aguila's 'Blindfold Music' on today's show.