In this installment: British concertos by Rawsthorne, Alwyn and Arnold, Japanese music by Takemitsu, Yashiro and Ifukube, avant-garde concertos by Ligeti and Penderecki, exotic concertos by Harrison and Rautavaara, and American minimal music by Adams and Glass (and much else).
1. Alan Rawsthorne, Piano Concerto No 2 (1951, Britain)
Alan Rawsthorne (1905-1971) originally studied to be a dentist and an architect. Only when he turned 20 did he switch to music; he went on to study at the Royal Manchester College of Music, first cello and piano. When he finished that in 1930, he continued studying piano in Berlin, with Egon Petri. His first breakthrough as a composer came with Theme and Variations for Two Violins in 1938, followed by Symphonic Studies in 1939. After World War II he devoted himself entirely to composition. His oeuvre is not very large, but it is diverse.
Alan Rawsthorne's three piano concertos (one of them for two pianos) are full of energy, and they are inventively scored. There is a scherzo-like quality to Rawsthorne's piano writing: he loves fast passage work, spiced by well-judged orchestral interventions and comments, and the effect is a little bit like Prokofiev in its energy, without being as motoric and driven. These characteristics can be found in the first two movements of the Second Concerto (1951), but the third movement is more genuinely lyrical, supported by some really lovely woodwind writing. In the finale the orchestra and the piano face off against each other in an often comical way.
[Performance listened to: Geoffrey Tozer and the London Philharmonic conducted by Matthias Bamert on Chandos]
2. George Dyson, Concierto Leggiero for Piano and String Orchestra (1951, Britain)
George Dyson (1883-1964) studied at the Royal College of Music with Stanford and was active as teacher, broadcaster and author, besides being an important composer in his own right. Dyson wrote lyrical, romantic music that was masterfully scored, and always displays great beauty of sound. In fact, he was a lyricist like Delius. The Concerto leggiero for piano and strings comes from the last phase of his activity as composer. "Leggiero" doesn't mean "light" in the sense of popular music, but rather "without pomp." In accordance with this title, it has an engaging lightness of touch and a great delicacy of texture. The slow movement is elegiac and the finale retains the work's nostalgia. Dyson may have had Mozart in mind as example. It is a splendid piece of music, Dyson's only venture in the piano concerto genre.
[Performance listened to: Eric Parkin and City of London Sinfonia conducted by Richard Hickox on Chandos]
3. Malcolm Arnold, Concerto for Piano Duet and Strings Op 32 (1951, Britain)
Malcolm Arnold (1921–2006) wrote music in many genres, including a cycle of nine symphonies, numerous concertos, concert works, chamber music, choral music and music for brass band. His style is tonal and rejoices in lively rhythms, brilliant orchestration, and an unabashed tunefulness (which in the radically avant-garde atmosphere of the 1950s and 1960s was held against him). He wrote extensively for the theater, with five ballets specially commissioned by the Royal Ballet, as well as two operas and a musical. He also produced scores for more than a hundred films, among these The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won an Oscar.
The Concerto for Piano Duet and Strings is one of Malcolm Arnold’s finest concertos, full of technical display, melody, contrast and color. The work brings busy and brilliant passagework for the soloists in the first movement, a still and intense passacaglia slow movement and a relentlessly high-spirited finale that zips along.
[Performance listened to: Philip Dyson and Kevin Sargent and Ulster Orchestra conducted by Esa Heikkila on Naxos]
4. Boris Blacher, Piano Concerto No 2 "in variable meters" (1952, Germany)
The German composer Boris Blacher (1903-1975) was born in an expatriate community in China. In 1922 he went to Berlin where he began to study architecture and mathematics; two years later, he turned to music and studied composition. The Nazis accused him of writing degenerate music (a badge of honor!) and he lost his teaching post at the Dresden Conservatory. His career resumed after 1945, and he later became president of the Academy of Arts, Berlin, and is today regarded as one of the most influential music figures of his time.
With the exception of church music, Blacher was active in all known genres. He always strove to arrange his next work musically differently, to avoid repetition. His musical language is characterized by sparseness of means of expression, clear structures and stiff rhythms.
In the late 1940s, Blacher developed a procedure he called "variable metrics," which he used in his works to break the musical symmetry with many, partially mathematically constructed measure changes. Blacher has stated that rhythm and form are in much closer relationship than previously assumed. One of the first works in which Blacher used this procedure was the Second Piano Concerto. The outline of the Andante, with which the Second Piano Concerto begins is (the numbers indicate the number of eighths per measure): 12-8-12-8-7-12-8-7-6-12-8-7-6-5, etc, until one finally comes out on 12-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. The Allegro that follows has the ratio reversed: 2-3-2-3-4, etc.
[Performance listened to: Horst Gobel and Philharmonie Pamarska conducted by Takao Ukigaya on Thorofon]
5. Bohuslav Martinů, Concerto No 4 "Incantation" (1956, Czech/U.S.)
Martinů’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 4, ‘Incantation‘, was completed in early 1956. It had its premiere in New York City on 4 October of that year with the pianist Rudolf Firkušný, and Leopold Stokowski
conducting The Symphony of the Air. In 1953, Martinů had left the United States (where he had found refuge as artist émigré from 1941 to 1953) for France and settled in Nice; in 1956, he took up an appointment as composer-in-residence at the American Academy in Rome and that was the period in which he composed his fourth piano concerto. It has been said that in the compositions of Martinů's last years we find the composer attempting through his music "a vicarious homecoming," although he never was able to return to Czechoslovakia (then under Communist rule).
Bohuslav Martinu's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 4 has several special features: the work stands apart from Martinu's other concertante works by consisting of only two movements, by its title "Incantations", and by its free form and highly exalted mood, full of fantastic shimmering timbres and eruptive moments.
The high tension first movement is a Poco Allegro, a toccata-like play with sonorities and effects. A short motive is played by piccolo, xylophone, and harp over a string tremolo. This motive is the core of the entire piece and is used throughout. When the horns present the motive on the woodwind tremolo, the clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, and cello reveal the theme. After the theme settles down, the solo piano plays the motive. The surprising ending
in a swirl of pianistic noise comes not with a bang, but with a whimper. Then follows the Poco moderato second movement. The piano and the orchestra clash vehemently in a dark and dramatic atmosphere. High
drama is maintained throughout, with captivating coloristic effects. After ascending tones in the woodwind and harp, an oriental motive appears on the oboe. Gradually, the solo piano takes an active
part, followed by the strings and woodwind, and the movement moves into a
cadenza. Martinů has been recorded as saying that the piece is an “expression
of the never-ending search for truth and the meaning of life, as well as
an homage to music, the musician’s reclusion, his powers and his
arms.”
[Performance listened to: Rudolf Firkušný with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Libor Pesek on RCA Victor]
6. Nino Rota, Piano Concerto in C (1960, Italy)
Nino Rota's Piano Concerto in C was dedicated to Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and is a glittering showpiece that reminds one of Rota's music for Fellini's films. A beguiling tune of Mozartean simplicity and grace begins the first movement, which is in a decidedly Neoclassical vein, with echoes of the Stravinskyan wit in Pulcinella. This is true commedia dell'arte! The second movement, Arietta con variazioni, does feature a haunting English horn solo that winds through some very Italianate contours, but the finale is clearly in the style of Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony, with a theme that winks at the listener while the piano flies along. The concerto is exceptionally well crafted, the melodies are attractive, and the piano writing is brilliant. As Rota stated, his intention was to bring a little bit of nostalgia and a lot of good humor and optimism and he has well succeeded in doing that.
Nino Rota (1911 – 1979) is best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti - he wrote more than 150 scores for Italian and international productions from the 1930s until his death in 1979. Alongside this great body of film work, he composed ten operas, five ballets and dozens of other orchestral, choral and chamber works, among which three piano concertos (besides the present one, the Concerto-Soiree and the Concerto in E minor).
Listen to: Vikingur Olafsson - piano with the Dala Sinfonietta, Tobias Ringborg - conductor:
7. William Alwyn, Piano Concerto No 2 (1960, Britain)
William Alwyn (1905 – 1985) wrote absolute music in a late romantic, technically virtuosic style and much film music. Alwyn's music is tonal and ambitious. His second wife, Doreen Carwithen (1922-2003), who called herself Mary Alwyn, was also a composer and served as Alwyn's assistant since their marriage in 1961. Since Alwyn's death, she was involved with the William Alwyn Archive and was, among other things, the driving force behind the complete recording of Alwyn's orchestral music on the English CD label Chandos. She also arranged Alwyn's second piano concerto for performance. This concerto, written for the "Henry Wood Promenade Concerts" in 1960 had never been played because Dutch pianist Cor de Groot for whom it had been written, lost control of his left hand just before the premiere due to a muscle disorder. The premiere, scheduled for the 1960 summer Proms, was canceled and Alwyn put the unplayed concerto away in a drawer.
Alwyn had written a strong, brilliant concerto in the traditional mold, pitting soloist against orchestra and giving the pianist every chance to show his outstanding skills. He moves decisively away from the Romantic idiom of
the four symphonies he had written during the previous ten years.
Instead, we find driving rhythms and more use of chromaticism, plus
uncharacteristic yet entirely assured use of jazz rhythms and blues
harmonies. There are surging climaxes (they sound a little like
the Ravel Left-Hand Concerto at times) and an angry, fighting mood in
the finale. The slow movement, which Alwyn had ripped out and thrown away, because he thought it didn't fit after all, was newly composed by Carwithen. That new slow movement is simple, peaceful,
and calming.
[Performance listened to: Howard Shelley, piano, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Richard Hickox on Chandos]
8. Alberto Ginastera, Piano Concerto No 1 Op 28 (1961, Argentina)
Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) is considered as one of the most important 20th-century classical composers of the Americas. Ginastera grouped his music into three periods: "Objective Nationalism" (1934–1948), "Subjective Nationalism" (1948–1958), and "Neo-Expressionism" (1958–1983). These periods vary in their use of traditional Argentine musical elements. His Objective Nationalistic works often integrate Argentine folk themes in a straightforward fashion, while works in the later periods incorporate traditional elements in increasingly abstracted forms. The Piano Concerto No 1 belongs to the third period. Besides twelve-tone music, we also hear some influence from Bela Bartok.
Beginning with a Cadenza e varianti, this four-part composition employs elements from the Classical-Romantic tradition as well as from twelve-note techniques. Following a sharp crescendo of orchestral chords consisting of a twelve-tone sequence, the piano enters with an octave technique reminiscent of Franz Liszt, presenting a twelve-tone sequence, on which the first movement further builds.
A wide range of timbres predominates in the second movement, the Scherzo allucinante. The composer himself describes it as "very quickly, played through at pianissimo volume." The movement exudes a supernatural atmosphere.
The third movement (Adagissimo) opens with a spine-chilling viola solo, to which the orchestra responds with tutti. The passion and pathos increase when the piano enters. In the middle of the movement, there is a quotation from the second movement of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4.
The fourth movement (Toccata concertata) is a true bravura piece in seven part Rondo form. Here, the twelve-tone sequence is set aside and lively musical ideas are developed. The piano and the orchestration with percussion violently switch places, and the coda ends with the piano striking a dissonant note against the orchestration as the forte four (fffff) builds even more heat.
This concerto has been called a work of brutalist magical realism, with unusual evocations of eerie rain-forest weirdness and great thundering percussive romps.
Listen to: Jorge Federico Osorio with The Orquesta Filarmónica de la UNAM:
9. Akira Ifukube, Ritmica Ostinata for Piano and Orchestra (1961, Japan)
Ifukube Akira (1914-2006) is perhaps best known among the general public for his film scores for the Godzilla movies. Ifukube was a nationalistic composer who rejected the Western symphonic tradition with sonata form and tried to find his own "Japanese voice." In this work there is - as the title indicates - an extensive use of ostinati (short motives repeated over and over again), a technique that characterizes all Ifukube's work. Ifukube used a scale that was basically pentatonic, to which he would add one or two notes not used by the melody. To create a harmonic texture he would often use double musical lines, simple counterpoint or canonic sections. The concerto also uses meters of five and seven beats, reflecting literary tradition as in haiku and waka, where lines have either 5 or 7 syllables. The solo part is treated non-pianistically, almost like a Japanese koto or biwa. The work is in Rondo form, with an Allegro framing slower sections.
Read more about the music of Ifukube Akira in my blog article in the series "Japanese Music."
[Performance listened to: Kobayashi Hitoshi, piano, with Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra conducted by Wakasugi Hiroshi on Victor]
10. Samuel Barber, Piano Concerto Op 38 (1962, U.S.)
The Piano Concerto by Samuel Barber was commissioned by the music publishing company G. Schirmer in honor of the centenary of their founding. The premiere was on September 24, 1962, with John Browning as soloist and with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Erich Leinsdorf. The work was met with great critical acclaim with Barber winning his second Pulitzer Prize in 1963 and the Music Critics Circle Award in 1964.
The first movement (Allegro appassionato) opens with a piano declamation of one of the major themes, and then moves into a furious tutti section. This opening section contains the expression of the movement's chief melodies. Through inversion, retrograde, and counterpoint variations of these melodies (which will appear in later movements), Barber spins out the entire movement, which starts and ends in E minor. The second movement (Canzone), predominantly in C-sharp minor, is based on one sweet but sad melody and is far more subdued than the first movement. This movement was transcribed and expanded from an Elegy for flute and piano, composed in 1959. The third movement (Allegro molto), mostly in B-flat minor, is in a furiously fast 5/8 time, with a pounding ostinato. It makes heavy use of the brass instruments, and is driven by the recapitulation of a brief motivic theme, giving the movement a modified rondo form.
Listen to: Dolpiti Kongviwatanakul with Boston Conservatory Orchestra
11. Akio Yashiro, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1967)
Akio Yashiro (1929 - 1976) was a post-war Japanese composer who had studied for five years at the Paris Conservatory in the 1950s. His style is very French, and could be located somewhere between Ravel and Dutilleux. Unfortunately he died at age 46 when he was just at the height of his powers.
This concerto consists of three movements. While writing the work the
composer kept in mind the adage "What a pianist has are
not two hands, but ten fingers" - so he wrote a highly demanding piano part throughout the concerto.
The first
movement, allegro animato, composed between 1964 and the summer of 1966,
is written in expanded sonata form with the first subject displayed by
the solo piano at the beginning of the movement and the second subject
distinguished by a prominent flute part. Several cadenzas of coloratura
style, which Liszt also loved in his compositions, are inserted in the
music. In contrast to the longer exposition compared to general sonata
movements, the recapitulation is placed within, rather than after, the
development.
Throughout the second movement, adagio
misterioso, composed together with the third movement between 1966 and
May 1967, the note C is played in ostinato rhythm, which the composer
explained as a "recollection of a dream of my younger days."
The
third movement, a rondo, progresses as allegro - andante - vivace molto
capriccioso. The music, recalling the melody of the first movement,
varies rapidly until the end of the concerto.
[Performance listened to: Izumi Tateno, piano, with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra directed by Kohtaro Satoh on Fontec]
12. Toru Takemitsu, Riverrun for piano and orchestra (1984, Japan)
Toru Takemitsu was greatly influenced by James Joyce and used several of the writer's phrases for his titles, as here from Finnagan's Wake.
The piece was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and given its first performance with Peter Serkin. “The music flows in the form of a musical tributary derived from a certain main current, wending its way through the scenery of night towards the sea of tonality,” Takemitsu wrote. “The motif, and the intervals of a major seventh and a minor third, almost like simple symbols, gradually disperse and always give birth to a variety of melodic sub-species. While they sometimes do confront one another, they do not necessarily represent a dialectic development, but continually keep occurring, disappearing and recurring.”
For more music by Takemitsu Toru, arguably Japan's greatest composer, see my blog article in the series "Japanese Music."
Listen to: Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra, Timothy Hoft-soloist and Taras Krysa, conductor:
13. Frank Martin, Piano Concerto (1968/69, Switzerland/Holland)
Frank Martin was a Swiss composer (1890-1974) who lived for many decades in The Netherlands. Frank Martin's music can be described as moderately modern, with a strong emphasis on rhythm. Harmonically, much of his work is characterized by a "sliding tonality," where the music moves from one key to another. Atonality he resolutely rejected, but otherwise he had an open mind that made eager use of all the new developments that 20th-century music had to offer. Through unusual combinations of instruments, he often obtained unusual timbres. He also managed to incorporate Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique into his style in a very personal way, without abandoning tonality.
The Piano Concerto is a truly big concerto composed at his request for the Austrian pianist Paul Badura-Skoda, who premiered it on 27 June 1970 with the Hague Residentie Orchestra under Jerzy Semkow as part of the Holland Festival.
The Con moto first movement is characterized by its hard-driving energy. The muscular piano part is dominant throughout. The mood darkens in the passacaglia-like Lento, an intensely elegiac moment. The inexhaustible energy of the first movement returns in the bright and jaunty Finale Presto. A spectacular concerto.
[Performance listened to: Paul Badura-Skoda, piano, with the Orchestra Symphonique de la Radio Luxembourg conducted by Frank Martin on Jecklin Disco]
14. Einojuhani Rautavaara, Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 45 (1969)
Rautavaara (1928-2016) was among the most significant Finnish composers after Sibelius. His style evolved gradually, moving from 12-tone serial modernism into Neo-Romanticism.
The First Piano Concerto contains many innovative uses of polytonality, cluster chords and extended uses of form. It was during this time that Rautavaara had become disenchanted with the serialist and twelve-tone techniques of his previous works, and abandoned them in favor of a more idiosyncratic, romantic, and avant-garde style.
The concerto is in three movements. The first movement, Con grandezza, opens with an eruption of raw, primal energy amid striking clusters of sound. For the first thirteen bars, there are octave clusters in the right hand. The orchestra joins abruptly, imitating the piano intro. The piano and orchestra bounce themes off of each other, before a large climax, where the pianist is instructed to slam her arm on the keyboard to simulate a 3-octave wide cluster chord. The second movement (Andante) is a quietly haunting chorale that starts with a C drone in the strings, and ends with more tone clusters that lead into the beginning of the next movement. The third movement (Molto vivace) provides a strong climax with themes from the first movement, and a short French horn solo.
Listen to: Scarlett Tong Zuo, Piano - Toshiyuki Shimada, Conductor - Yale Symphony Orchestra:
15. Lou Harrison, Piano Concerto (1983-85, U.S.)
Lou Harrison was the quintessential West Coast composer. Born in
Portland, Oregon, Harrison grew up in northern California, studied with
Henry Cowell in San Francisco, studied with Arnold Schoenberg at UCLA,
and had a life-long fascination with Asian music (such as the Indonesian Gamelan), among many other
musical and cultural interests that connect him to the Pacific Rim.
Harrison was the first major composer in the Western world to seriously incorporate alternate tuning systems into his music, composing pieces in a variety of just-intonation systems and bringing back long-forgotten temperaments, as he did in his Piano Concerto (written for the jazz pianist Keith Jarrett), in which he calls for the solo piano to be tuned in an archaic mode that is subtly different from our normal equal-tempered scale. The orchestra also participates in this tuning. The result is a piquant sound, fresh but not jarringly “wrong.”
There are four movements: Allegro - Stampede - Largo - Allegro moderato. The opening Allegro is a classically structured movement of thematic exposition, development, and tonally rounded recapitulation. It includes several big piano solos. The Stampede is a non-stop chase. In contrast, the quiet slow movement is a calm reverie. The finale is another perpetual motion romp, but much lighter in sound as Harrison gives it over almost entirely to the piano and light percussion (bongo and glockenspiel).
[Performance listened to: Keith Jarrett, piano, with the New Japan Philharmonic conducted by Naoto Otomo on New World records]
16. György Ligeti, Piano Concerto (1985-88, Hungary/Austria)
Ligeti (1923-2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer. Born in Romania, he settled as a composer in Hungary, but fled from there to Austria after the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. Ligeti was one of the leading figures of the European avant-garde. As a result of his study of serial music, he developed the so-called "sound surface composition" and "micropolyphony," a compositional technique that consists in creating dense, microtonal sound textures.
Initial sketches of the Concerto began in 1980, but it was not until 1985 that he found a way forward and the work proceeded more quickly. The first three movements were premiered in Graz, Austria on October 23, 1986 by pianist Anthony di Bonaventura and the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Mario di Bonaventura. The following year, Ligeti added another two movements, the fourth and fifth, and the final autograph of the last movement was ready in January 1988. Ligeti wrote that “after hearing the work twice, I came to the conclusion that the third movement was not an adequate finale; my feeling of form demanded continuation, a supplement.”
At the time of its composition, Ligeti was working on his first book of piano etudes, and the superimposed African rhythms, shifting accents, and changing tempos so characteristic of those pieces can be heard in the concerto as well.
The first movement is similar to the polymetric concept used in Ligeti's first etude, Désordre. It is very rhythmically complex throughout. The second movement, the only slow movement of the piece, begins without pause. It uses the lamento motif from the last movement of Ligeti's Horn Trio and his sixth piano etude, Automne à Varsovie. This motif also forms the basis of the third movement, another fast movement. According to Ligeti himself, the fourth movement, more fragmentary than the surrounding movements, is inspired by computer-generated images of fractals (like the Mandelbrot set). The fifth movement, similar to the first, uses three related time signatures simultaneously.
Listen to: Imri Talgam, piano, with the Israeli Contemporary Players, Zsolt Nagy, conductor:
17. Lowell Liebermann, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No 2 Op 36 (1992, U.S.)
Lowell Liebermann was born in 1961 in New York City, where he still resides. His music combines elements of traditional tonality and structure with more adventurous harmonies. Liebermann's music is often highly polytonal and Liebermann explores different bitonal possibilities in many of his pieces. Stephen Hough's interpretation of the 2nd Piano Concerto under Liebermann's direction was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition in 1998.
The Second Concerto is one of the major and most representative works of Liebermann. A twelve tone row is used both melodically and harmonically (and also in its inverted form in the 2nd movement). Liebermann bases a set of Variations on it in the first movement. The 3rd movement is a Passacaglia using the tone row. The fourth is fast and has a terrific ending culminating in a double octave rising piano passage of great excitement accompanied by blaring trombones. This is a Romantic, virtuoso concerto in the style of Rachmaninov, Dohnanyi and Howard Hanson.
Listen to: Yiding Isabelle Niu, piano, with the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra under conductor Eduardo Leandro:
18. John Adams, Century Rolls (piano concerto, 1997, U.S.)
Century Rolls is a piano concerto by the American composer John Adams. Commissioned by Emanuel Ax, the work dates from 1997. Ax was the soloist in the concerto's premiere on September 25, 1997 in Cleveland, Ohio, with Christoph von Dohnányi conducting The Cleveland Orchestra.
Adams conceived the work after hearing the distinct sounds of a 1920s player-piano, and the work was "in part an attempt to recreate that initial response I had received to the sound of the piano as heard via the medium of the piano roll." He has said that the concerto is his view on "the whole past century of piano music". In addition to the temporal element ("Century"), the title refers to old piano rolls.
Listen to: Lukas Geniušas with the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Karolis Variakojis:
19. Leonardo Balada, Piano Concerto No 3 (1999, Spain/U.S.)
Leonardo Balada (born 1933) is an American composer of Spanish origin. He studied at the Conservatorio del Liceu in Barcelona and, after emigrating to the United States in 1956, continued his education at the Juilliard School in New York. He studied composition with Vincent Persichetti, Aaron Copland and Igor Markevitch. Since 1970 he has taught at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1981 he received U.S. citizenship.
In his music he incorporated North American and Spanish folk tunes. Most of his works, including those for purely instrumental ensemble, are based on human speech or song.
The Third Piano Concerto was finished in 1999 and the complete work premiered on 12 February 2000 by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and Rosa Torres-Pardo as soloist. The concerto is well known for its wealth of folk elements. It is divided into three untitled movements. In the first movement, the composer uses elements from folk music of Spain, recreating a pasodoble, with a timbral arrangement that tries to imitate a street organ. The second movement evokes melodic textures that are similar to the music of Al-Andalus. In the third movement, the composer writes a jota aragonesa, a typical music genre from Aragon, in which Balada maintains the melodic structures from the first movement.
A contemporary Spanish voice that ably blends modernity and the past without compromise.
[Performance listened to: Rosa Torres-Pardo, piano, with the Barcelona Symphony and Catalonia National Orchestra conducted by Jose Serebrier on Naxos]
20. Krzysztof Penderecki, Concerto per pianoforte e orchestra (2001/2002, Poland)
Krzysztof Penderecki (1933 – 2020) was a Polish composer whose best known works include Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, Symphony No. 3, his St Luke Passion, and Polish Requiem. Penderecki's oeuvre includes four operas, eight symphonies and other orchestral pieces, a variety of instrumental concertos, choral settings of mainly religious texts, as well as chamber and instrumental works.
Penderecki’s Piano Concerto was written during 2001-2, in honor of Marie-Joseé Kravis, and given its premiere in Carnegie Hall, New York on 9th May 2002 with Emanuel Ax as soloist and Wolfgang Sawallisch conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra. A major revision was undertaken five years later and first heard in Cincinnati on 7th December 2007, with Barry Douglas as soloist and the composer conducting the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
The concerto comprises ten movements played without pause. It renews Penderecki’s involvement with the ‘grand’ concerto tradition, notably of the Russian lineage that had its culmination in Rachmaninov and Prokofiev. The subtitle, ‘Resurrection’, is made musically explicit by the plainsong-like idea (which was conceived in the aftermath of the ‘9/11’ terrorist attacks) that only gradually makes its way into the foreground before emerging at full strength during the climactic stages.
Listen to: Mūza Rubackytė at Lithuanian National Philharmonic Society. Conductor Maximiano Valdes:
21. Philip Glass, Double Concerto for Two Pianos (2015, U.S.)
The Double Concerto for Two Pianos was composed especially for the Labèque sisters who are sibling pianists renowned for their incredible synchronicity and energy.
The work itself follows the three movement form in which many concertos
are conceived. However in this case the first and second movements are
both fast and the slow movement is the third and last part of the
concerto. From the very first bar of the concerto, we hear that the pianos and the orchestra are part of one tapestry of sound. All throughout the work one hears the pianists playing figures which are doubled by sections of the orchestra, or where the range of certain instruments end, other instruments pick up the thread and continue the melodic or rhythmic line. In other words, the relationship of the soloist to the orchestra is not the usual one, contrasting the smaller duo with the larger orchestral ensemble. Instead, the music of the soloists is shared between the two and the orchestra serves to extend the range and color of the soloists.
Listen to: Katia and Marielle Labeque with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by John Adams:
Thomas Adès's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra for the pianist Kirill Gerstein and was completed in 2018. It was first performed by Gerstein and the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer at Symphony Hall, Boston, on 7 March 2019.
The Piano Concerto is cast in three movements in the traditional fast–slow–fast form: Allegramente - Andante gravemente - Allegro gioioso. The first movement Allegramente opens with a statement of the theme by
piano and then tutti. A march-like bridge passage leads to the more
expressive second subject, first played by the piano and then taken up
by the orchestra. The nocturnal second movement rises from dark chords
in the low brass and woodwinds. The finale is a riotous romp.
Adès's Piano Concerto has been highly praised by music critics. Aaron Keebaugh of the Boston Classical Review wrote, "Throughout its thirty-minute span, the composer paints a bright sonic picture through thorny dissonances and wild chromatic diversions. Its melodies unfold through quick-changing meters to form asymmetric shapes, with orchestral tuttis never seeming to fall on the beat." He added, "The effect is mesmerizing, and the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra stands as Adès' greatest achievement to date."
[Performance listened to: Kirill Gerstein with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Thomas Adès on DG]
[With thanks to some relevant public domain articles in either the German, Japanese, Dutch or English Wikipedia]
Best Piano Concertos from the Twentieth Century: Part One (1904-1932)
Best Piano Concertos from the Twentieth Century: Part Two (1926-1948)
Best Piano Concertos from the Twentieth Century: Part Three (1951-2018)
Classical Music Index