An interview and performance from Accordo

They are colleagues and friends, a most welcome combination in the highly emotional world of chamber music performance. First chair players in the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Minnesota Orchestra, Steven Copes, Ruggero Allifranchini , Maiya Papach and Tony Ross are Accordo. In anticipation of a performance on Monday, February 6, Accordo stopped by to perform and chat with Steve Staruch.

• Regional Spotlight: Nelson Goerner
  There are those magical piano recital performances where everything goes superbly. When the program sings, the piano purrs and the audiences listens as one to every nuance of the artist, it's something indescribable. Pianist Nelson Goerner gave a Frederic Chopin Society recital just this last weekend. By all accounts this was a performance that will live long in the memory. His Mozart performance was especially transcendent as you will here in this week's Regional Spotlight.
• Music with Minnesotans: Joan Potter
  Theater director/producer, writer and retired teacher Joan Potter recently traveled to Peru to hike to Machu Pichu and experienced an awe-inspiring sight when the clouds way below her started to rise up the mountains. The scene brought some of the most soulful music into her mind.
• New Classical Tracks - An Evening at Versailles
  The group Trio Settecento has a new disc, exploring the French Baroque -- Rameau, Couperin, and their contemporaries. The group's founder, violinist Rachel Barton Pine, relishes the intimacy and expressiveness of this music.
• Performance Today: Philip Glass Turns 75
  When PT host Fred Child recently asked Philip Glass what the experience of composing is all about, Glass had a quick answer. "It's about fear," he said jokingly. If that's true, then Glass has been living with fear for three quarters of a century. He turns 75 today. In today's show, we'll have a tribute to this iconic American composer and hear highlights from the world premiere of his Ninth Symphony.
• Jesper Kyd at Minnesota Public Radio Headquarters
  Composer Jesper Kyd visited MPR headquarters in November for Top Score's first live event. Check out the audio and video from the night!
• Ripe But Not Sweet - An Essay by Bill Morelock
  There have been countless meditations on the meaning of Shakespeare's "Ripeness is all." It was a Rorschach centuries before Rorschach. Often it suggests a serenity available, though not always secured, late in one's life. Ludwig van Beethoven was defiantly human, a spiny fruit, and stubbornly refused to sweeten as he matured.