Pianist Sergio Tiempo and the Quad City Symphony Orchestra will perform Beethoven's third piano concerto as Beethoven never could - on a modern piano. But when the composer wrote the piece in 1800, that's certainly how he intended it to be played.

His Mozart-era piano couldn't sustain the heavy style of playing Beethoven envisioned; it actually snapped the strings.

"In a way, it is the first Romantic concerto which only found its true vehicle through later instruments," Tiempo said in an e-mail interview from Belgium.

The 34-year-old pianist has played the concerto for years, but he has yet to tire of the work. "It is one of those pieces that keeps growing inside of you throughout your life," Tiempo said.

The Winter Blanket has undergone dramatic changes in its six-year career, and the evidence is Golden Sun, a transitional EP that could prove as important to the band's direction as "Good Vibrations" was to the Beach Boys.

When band members Doug Miller and Stephanie Davila migrated from the Quad Cities to Minneapolis in 2002, one would think the move to a colder climate (for a band named The Winter Blanket) would have resulted in starker, more somber music. Golden Sun, as evidenced by the title, is anything but.

Love is all around this coming Tuesday, as tribute CDs are falling like autumn's leaves. The Beatles are recipients of two such albums in their honor, one sweet and acoustic, the other snarling and turned up. Compiled and recorded for Mike Harding's BBC radio program in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Rubber Soul, the track-for-track recreation in Rubber Folk is an import-only CD worth looking for. The Gottdisc Records' release is a who's who of British folk artists, with Martin Simpson, Paul Brady, Ralph McTell, and others putting their stamp on each classic song. Haunting in its melodic a cappella glory, June Tabor turns in a solo vocal turn on "In My Life." Other perfect love letters in song include John Tams' ukulele stroll through "Girl" and the piano pop tenderness of Cora Dillion and Sam Lakeman on "Wait."

On the list of things that are tough to get youths on board with - right up there with meeting curfew and putting down their cell phones - attending the ballet has to rank near the top. Consequently, Ballet Quad Cities Executive Director Joedy Cook has, for years, been bringing the ballet to them.

"The majority of our performance now has some type of outreach component," Cook says of Ballet Quad Cities' public output, "whether we have a special school matinée, or we have programs that we go into schools with."

So when the time came to prepare Ballet Rocks II - a follow-up to last autumn's high-energy, rock-heavy collaboration between local rockers and Ballet Quad Cities - Cook was looking to capture the attention and interest of younger audiences, and to showcase her organization's second company of high-school dancers.