Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner A favorite accessible contemporary piano concerto, anyone?

Yes, I'd be interested.

I'm also interested please! If you have trouble uploading your recording somewhere, let me know via PM and I can help.

Now, I don't know how this is going to sound but I'm actually working on a piano concerto... It should be accessible to the ears, but not so much to the technicalities (damn difficult concerto...). I'm not too sure on when I'll have something more specific to share, but since my duets are doing so well and I've been posting about them for quite a while, I might as well start bugging you with the concerto as well!

(The Schnittke piano+strings concerto is WONDERFUL! Not too neglected, since I know there've been a few performances AND recordings available thus far, but still...)

I'm currently writing one as well... anyone who wants a score should PM me and I can send excerpts once it's finished

I aired Zimerman's recording of the Litosławski on my radio show this morning! My first hearing - a rather incredible work.

I should be able to get my brother (the compu-wizard) to put it online tonight, or atleast by this weekend. I'll let you know.

Here's my concerto. It's derived (admittedly a long way) from minimalism. I'm including an earlier (solo) piece to compare. The concerto is midi, but works surprisingly well (except at the beginning where there's that weird "pp" = "distance" effect.) Enjoy.

www.cheyennesd.net/other/other.html

Interesting.

I like Esa Pekka Salonen's Concerto and Magnus Lindberg's new Concerto No.2. Both require extraordinary feats of virtuosity, though.

Someone beat me to it, I was just about to mention Lindberg's 2nd concerto I was able to find the recording of the premiere through classical archives (try here - http://www.classicalarchives.com/work/72052.html ), and the score is available for browsing through on Booseys website. It's a VERY dense scoring - a friend of mine heard the premiere but said she couldn't hear much of Bronfman (possibly because of where she was seated, however).
Magnus is a very friendly fellow in addition. His later works (from the last 10-15 years or so) are quite different from his earlier style. He by the way recorded his own first piano concerto (under Salonen's baton), so he's indeed quite a formidable pianist himself.

Is the Lindberg 2nd one of those concertos for piano against orchestra? I've liked the Lindberg I've heard so far, but a concerto where the pianist is constantly struggling to be heard is somewhat off-putting........

It sounds relatively fine in the recording, but its a massive orchestration...Balance is very much of an issue in piano concertos by modernist composers of our times as doublings and octaves aren't an accepted procedure in certain circles. Doublings/octaves, however, is usually what makes the piano audible in a concerto context...There's a funny story about this regarding Lindberg's FIRST piano concerto where he had troubles with balance issues and discussed the matter with my current piano teacher, as well as with Pierre Boulez. Linberg explained to Boulez that he wanted the piano to be heard at all times, to which Boulez replied - "well, then you're going to have another Chopin concerto...". My teacher, who has been a friend of Magnus since they were in their teens, mentioned that for the piano to be heard at all times, octaves and doublings would be necessary - now, with Magnus' compositional aesthetics at that time, he seemed shocked by such a suggestion. Octaves are indeed the worst dissonance for a forward-looking modernist!! (at least I do believe it was Magnus who was shocked by the suggestion, though it might have been Boulez. Lindbergs composigional aesthetics, of course, have changed since then)

Thanks.

I'm fond of James MacMillan's "The Berserking". You can hear short samples at AllMusic , and the full recording's on Spotify if you have that.

Thanks for the link. I attended the West coast premiere in SF, so I'm thrilled to have a recording of the piece.

Wow, a Second Piano Concerto from Lindberg! He's another personal favorite. I hope I can somehow procure the recording (oddly, ArkivMuic doesn't carry it).

It hasn't been officially released as far as I can tell. This work would greatly benefit from a studio recording so the balances can be properly corrected--unless Lindberg wants the piano covered by the orchestra at times!