Public television is full of performances that you can watch right now. Here are six highlights featuring or celebrating accomplished American artists including conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, violinist Itzhak Perlman, composer Philip Glass, the Cleveland Orchestra, and even a play by writer Edgar Allan Poe in a radio-style adaption! These videos come from our sister programs All Arts, Great Performances, and Live from Lincoln Center, which each have even more to offer on their websites.
Leonard Bernstein Centennial Celebration at Tanglewood
In honor of Leonard Bernstein‘s 100th birthday, Tanglewood — the famed summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra — dedicated its entire 2018 season to the iconic composer, conductor, performer, educator, and humanitarian. Featured on PBS’s Great Performances.
New York Philharmonic Opening Gala with Itzhak Perlman
Alan Gilbert leads the New York Philharmonic in a gorgeous rendition of Respighi’s “Fountains of Rome” and “Pines of Rome.” Featured violinist Itzhak Perlman joins the orchestra to perform five of his favorite pieces, including Massenet’s Meditation from “Thaïs” and the Theme from “Schindler’s List.” From Live from Lincoln Center.
The Perfect American by Philip Glass
At the age of 75, Philip Glass composed the opera “The Perfect American” for the Teatro Real in Madrid. Based on a novel about Disney, it examines the particularly American mythologizing of the man and his time. Glass describes the opera not as a portrait but “a journey poetic and tragic” through the final years of a deeply flawed and complicated artist. From AllArts.org.
Ghosts of the Elysian Arms by Edgar Allan Poe
It is a stormy night on Highway One in the summer of 1940, and Al Geery’s Studebaker Dictator smashes into a Plymouth convertible head on. Mr. Geery is surprised to wake up unscathed in the twisted wreckage of his automobile, and even more surprised when the mysterious Mr. Maro escorts him to the towering Elysian Arms Hotel, where each room is occupied by a singular and frightening story. This adaptation of Poe‘s writing is done in the style of an early radio play!
The Cleveland Orchestra Centennial Celebration
Great Performances: The Cleveland Orchestra Centennial Celebration commemorates the centennial of the orchestra’s founding with a gala concert conducted by music director Franz Welser-Möst featuring works touching on more than a century of Viennese musical traditions. World-renowned, Grammy-nominated pianist Lang Lang joins the orchestra in a special performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24. The concert also features “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” (The Woman Without a Shadow), Symphonic Fantasy by Richard Strauss and Maurice Ravel’s viscerally cataclysmic “La Valse (The Waltz),” which dramatically evokes the changing artistic worlds between the 19th and 20th centuries. Featured on PBS’s Great Performances.