In the spring of 1968, conductor Paul Freeman ran into Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Atlanta airport. Their brief conversation was one he'll never forget. On this episode of Performance Today, hear about that life-changing encounter in our musical celebration of Dr. King's life and legacy.
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Composer Arnold Schoenberg liked the Piano Quartet No. 1 by Johannes Brahms, but he decided that it needed a few changes. Schoenberg arranged the quartet for orchestra and threw out the piano part entirely. On this episode Performance Today, hear Schoenberg's orchestral makeover of the Brahms's Piano Quartet No. 1, from a concert at the Aspen Music Festival.
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Winter can be a brutally dark time of year. In Denmark, Danes have created a way of inviting warmth and joy into their lives during the winter with hygge (hue-guh). The Danish String Quartet told PT host Fred Child that hygge is about creating intentional moments of quiet coziness by yourself or with friends and family. How can you hygge this winter? Enter our drawing!
Come match wits with Bruce Adolphe - now you can play the Piano Puzzler anytime, anywhere! Every week, we're putting a sneak peek of the upcoming Puzzler online; have a listen, and then send us your best guess.
Pianist Rodolfo Leone is Performance Today's current Young Artist in Residence. Rodolfo joins Fred Child in the studio for conversation and music, and you can hear it all here!
We recently started tracking how many pieces of music on our program were composed by, performed by or conducted by women. The numbers made it clear: women are underrepresented. Performance Today wants to change that.
Rachel Barton Pine is so much more than a violin soloist. This October, she is seeing the start of the next phase of her enormous, 15-year project that adds to her brand publisher, researcher, advocate and educator.
We're celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month! We had the honor of speaking to Francisco Nunez, a choral conductor who won a 2011 MacArthur Genius Grant, to name one accolade, but his accomplishments are vast. Listen to this excerpt of their conversation in which Mr. Nunez tells us about what got him started, his musical idols, and role models.
He led thrilling concerts. He traveled the world. He hobnobbed with brilliant thinkers and artists. Is there anything Leonard Bernstein missed out on in his rich life? His daughter Jamie Bernstein says yes. He would have loved the Internet, she says, but more importantly he never fully understood the impact that his music has had on the world.
Charlie Harmon worked for several years as an assistant to Leonard Bernstein. In his new book On the Road and Off the Record With Leonard Bernstein and in his interview with Fred Child, Harmon describes vividly the October day in 1990 he was called to visit Bernstein and realized it was the last time they would see each other.
