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Los Angeles is a city of excess, but conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen has won it over with his understated, quiet ways. Salonen appears onstage at Disney Hall, conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Haydn's "Drumroll Symphony," the Symphony No. 103.

On the 250th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birth, we look at his final symphony: No. 41 in C Major, or the Jupiter Symphony. Mozart wrote it just three years before his death in 1791.

On Sept. 12, 1910, Gustav Mahler introduced his Symphony No. 8 -- a massive, hulking work featuring an enormous double chorus and the largest orchestra ever put on stage at the time. Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas says he thought it was the most "grotesque assemblage of noises" he had ever heard. But many years later, he has recorded a Grammy-winning version of the symphony.

NPR's Cheryl Corley reports on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's search for a new musical director who doesn't mind the broad range of duties. Conductor Daniel Barenboim is leaving the job, saying it involved too many non-artistic demands.

The Nashville Symphony Orchestra brings a wonderfully weird program to Carnegie Hall, including the New York premiere of a new electric violin concerto by Terry Riley, with soloist Tracy Silverman.

Noting Shostakovich's 100th birthday on Sept. 25, we begin a week of Shostakovich exploration with Leon Botstein, Laurel Fay and Valery Gergiev.

A newly reissued set of symphonies from the decades after World War II recovers a gifted yet neglected composer, Vadim Salmanov. These live recordings burn with intensity and sorrow.

While many or the nation's major orchestras continue to struggle financially, smaller community and regional orchestras are flourishing. Jeff Lunden profiles southern New Jersey's Bay-Atlantic Symphony.

Joseph Horowitz, author of Classical Music in America, guides a tour through the American symphony in its formative years — from early knockoffs of European pieces to the resolutely homegrown sound of Charles Ives.

When Marin Alsop heard a piece by Brahms as a youngster, she discovered the transforming power of music. Now the celebrated conductor has recorded each of Brahms' four symphonies and thinks of them as a symphonic solar system filled with tenderness, humor and struggle.