Hear all stories from this page
From the Top
Pianist Michelle Cann, 18, was born into a musical family: Her father conducts a school band, and her sister is a concert pianist. Cann has played trombone, violin, steel drums, bells, guitar, tuba and organ, as well. She plays music from the Piano Sonata No. 1 by Alberto Ginastera.
Eighteen-year-old composer Tudor Dominik Maican's music is turning heads in the classical world.
Denyce Graves stars in the chilling story of a fugitive slave faced with hard choices.
June 20, 2007 · Every Saturday 17-year-old Siwoo Kim wakes before the crack of dawn to make a seven-hour drive to the Music Institute of Chicago. There, he studies with acclaimed violin teacher Almita Vamos. "Every lesson I gain something new," he says. Siwoo performs "Sabre Dance" by Aram Khachaturian, arranged by Jascha Heifetz.
June 15, 2007 · If ever there were an R-rated opera, it's Puccini's lurid potboiler, Tosca. Perhaps not coincidentally, it's also one of the most popular operas of all time — featured here in a production from Houston Grand Opera starring soprano Maria Guleghina. Web Extra: A Maria Callas Classic
June 12, 2007 · Strauss' gorgeous music in "At Sunset" is lit with the golden rays of a fall afternoon slipping away into twilight. An opening burst of orchestral color soars, but gets muted in a haze of French horns. The strings, floating high and sweet, weave a long-lined melody.
June 13, 2007 · The members of the Gray Charitable Trust Piano Trio have talents that extend beyond the group they formed at the Settlement Music School, in Philadelphia: One beat-boxes, one does impressions, and so on. The trio plays "La Muerte de Angel" by Astor Piazzolla.
June 8, 2007 · Not many 70-year-old sopranos could score a box office hit portraying a teenage heroine, but Mirella Freni did it as Joan of Arc, the title character of Tchaikovsky's The Maid of Orleans, at the Washington National Opera. Web Extra: Mirella Freni's final opera production
June 2, 2007 · We know him as the man who wrote the music used at graduations, but in Britain, Edward Elgar means a lot more. It's the 150th anniversary of the birth of the composer who gave the British "Pomp and Circumstance" and one little "Enigma." Web Extra: Hear Elgar's 'Enigma' Unraveled
June 6, 2007 · Priscilla Wadsworth, 16, chose to play flute in band because it's what her friends chose to play. She enjoyed it immediately, but didn't get serious about playing flute until a stroke of luck led her to meet her teacher, Dr. Gerald Welker. She performs Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto Pastorale, 1st. mvt. This segment originally aired on Jan. 10th, 2007.
May 28, 2007 · Decades of amazing musical performances are hidden behind the limits of audio technology at the time they were recorded. Now, a new technology re-performs and records classics by Glenn Gould, Alfred Cortot and Art Tatum.
June 11, 2007 · Sissieretta Jones is one of America's greatest opera singers, but her 19th century career has been left out of many modern history books. Rosalyn Story, author of And So I Sing: African American Divas Of Opera and Concert, talks with Farai Chideya.
June 1, 2007 · To help celebrate the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth, the Salzburg Festival presented a starkly beautiful production of Idomeneo — arguably the composer's first true, operatic masterpiece. Web Extra: Hear the Complete Opera
June 2, 2007 · The Van Cliburn Foundation's Fifth annual International Competition for Outstanding Amateurs is underway this week. NPR's John Ydstie talks to one of the semifinalists, 46-year-old Greg Fisher, a former child prodigy who has worked at his family's glass and mirror installation company in Edmond, Okla., for the past 30 years.
May 23, 2007 · On From the Jungles of Paraguay, Australian guitarist John Williams celebrates Paraguayan composer Augustin Barrios-Mangore, an entrancing songwriter whose music went largely neglected by modern interpreters until the 1980s and '90s.
Hear an eclectic mix of ten concert specials recorded live at Disney Hall in Los Angeles.
Conductor Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony tell the tale of Scheherazade.
Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, with its whiplash rhythms, continues to thrill audiences.
Mahler's epic symphonies were vehicles for him to express his beliefs and pose questions.
Related Podcasts
Listen to full concerts
