Performance Today features recent concert performances by great classical artists from around the globe, as well as interviews, news and features. Listeners to Performance Today, on any given day, may hear from performances in the great concert halls of New York, Prague, London, Berlin and Paris. Hosted by Fred Child.
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| Monday at 1:00 pm | Classical MPR | Find a Station |
| Tuesday at 1:00 pm | Classical MPR | Find a Station |
| Wednesday at 1:00 pm | Classical MPR | Find a Station |
| Thursday at 1:00 pm | Classical MPR | Find a Station |
| Friday at 1:00 pm | Classical MPR | Find a Station |
Aaron Stern feels there's a reason he and Leonard Bernstein became so close. Stern says he learned a lot from Bernstein about music and feels he was able to teach Bernstein something about wisdom not long before Bernstein's death. Together they came up with the idea for the Academy for the Love of Learning which is celebrating 20 years as a nonprofit organization.
In so many ways, Leonard Bernstein was extraordinary. Talented, charismatic and handsome to boot, it was if a magic wand tapped his head at birth. His daughter Jamie Bernstein in her new book Famous Father Girl describes what the public didn't see: the doubt and guilt that nagged his conscience AND fueled his music.
Orin O'Brien was the first woman hired to perform full-time with the New York Philharmonic. Watching Leonard Bernstein conduct was certainly exciting for the audience, but this double bassist says it was exhilarating and terrifying to face the conductor as a member of his orchestra. O'Brien calls working with Bernstein "one of the best experiences of my professional life."
Growing up, Jamie Bernstein says her father was relentlessly competitive and preternaturally good at everything. Well, almost everything. In this interview highlight, she describes the glee she and her siblings felt when they found one thing their father wasn't good at. Jamie Bernstein's new memoir is called Famous Father Girl.
It sounds like the set-up for a great punch line. Three composers walk into a restaurant: Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland and Michael Tilson Thomas. The first course is challenging musical trivia. The next course involves clanging spoons and glasses. Michael Tilson Thomas describes a memorable dinner with two other American composers.
Sure, the song 'Maria' from Leonard Bernstein's musical 'West Side Story' is lovely. For composer and conductor Tania Leon, it meant so much more. 'Maria' set in motion her dream of a possible life in America. Leon remembers her mentor, friend, salsa dancer and Spanish-speaker Leonard Bernstein.
When Bright Sheng went to the Tanglewood Summer Music Festival as a young composer, he didn't think his Peking Duck would lead to a meeting with Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein left impressed by the music and thrilled by Sheng's cooking. Those minutes in the kitchen made Sheng "Tanglewood famous," he says, and was the beginning of a long working relationship with Bernstein.
Leonard Bernstein's love of word play and competitive drive was notorious. Whether it was anagrams or mental jotto, Bernstein's former assistant Charlie Harmon says there were few who could beat him. And if you did, his daughter Jamie Bernstein said, you might wish you hadn't.
Conductor, composer, pianist Michael Tilson Thomas says few people realize how rooted Leonard Bernstein was in Jewish Theater. Thomas says that shared interest created an immediate bond between them.
In 1982, Charlie Harmon was hired to be Leonard Bernstein's assistant. The first meeting did not go exactly smoothly, but for four years, Harmon had a first row seat to the thrilling, jet set, creative and exhausting career and life of Bernstein. Harmon has written a new book about their work together called On the Road and Off the Record with Leonard Bernstein.
In 1989, just a month after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Leonard Bernstein performed a concert in East Germany for the world to see. They played Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, based on Schiller's Ode to Joy poem, but Bernstein changed one important word. Journalist Stephanie Griffith was there, reporting for the Los Angeles Times.
"It was as if Bernstein handed me a big platter with 'Career' on it and said, 'Hey kid! You want it?'" Andre Watts said yes. The pianist describes the 1963 concert that changed his life.
Leonard Bernstein didn't impress just Americans. He impressed the world. Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra's Music Director JoAnn Falletta remembers the music lessons and cigarette ashes Bernstein left in her Juilliard School conducting classes.
Those of us who knew Leonard Bernstein through his recordings loved his work. But what did Bernstein's colleagues and fellow composers think about his career? Composer Philip Glass says that, in considering Bernstein's legacy, there is a lot that he did right. But there was one thing he thinks Bernstein could have done differently.
When he was a graduate student, Richard Danielpour knew Leonard Bernstein as a mentor, a provocateur and the center of a swirling mix of celebrities. Danielpour says Bernstein was quite funny, sometimes sardonic. But there was one person he would never make fun of.
Conductor Roderick Cox is a trailblazer.
Tesfa Wondemagegnehu has been sharing the transformative art of vocal music for more than a decade.
Titus Underwood is the acting principal oboe of the Nashville Symphony.
Chi-chi Nwanoku is one of the most highly respected double bassists in the international classical arena.
Jessie Montgomery is an accomplished chamber musician, composer and music educator.