Edgy, tuneful, humorous, rhythmic, dramatic and tonal -
everything I think you could want in a piano concerto.
In each movement the piano starts as just part of the
orchestra then gradually emerges. The first movement
has an angular and a smooth theme that interplay (both
heard together in woodwind in the first two bars).
The slow movement has a rich dialogue between piano and
2 solo violas. The third movement is slightly more
episodic but reuses the smooth theme from the first
movemen...(+)
Edgy, tuneful, humorous, rhythmic, dramatic and tonal -
everything I think you could want in a piano concerto.
In each movement the piano starts as just part of the
orchestra then gradually emerges. The first movement
has an angular and a smooth theme that interplay (both
heard together in woodwind in the first two bars).
The slow movement has a rich dialogue between piano and
2 solo violas. The third movement is slightly more
episodic but reuses the smooth theme from the first
movement with a twist, culminating in a ripping
finale.
(Note I've not put all the divisi into the instruments
- hopefully it is obvious where to do that,
particularly for soloists as I've put two solo violas
onto the same line to reduce screen-space!)
The whole concerto was composed between May and
September 2015.
There were many techniques I tried in this piece, such
as dovetailing one instrument into another (e.g. solo
violin fades out whilst solo flute fades in on the same
note), percussion to help transition between sections,
large dynamic contrasts, sudden changes of texture,
blending of sections with sustaining instruments
(particularly brass), anticipating the chord of the
next bar by having it arrive early in some instruments
(gives a feeling of push, especially with a crescendo)
etc. The first movement is based on the two themes
above, an angular one and a smooth one, both heard
together in shortened version right at the start. The
final movement is mostly based on them too, but
slightly altered (deliberately half remembered) and
then taking parts of those themes and running off in
new directions with them. The slow movement was more
about the texture between solo strings and piano and I
tried to get tension with rapid modulation and mixing
duplets against triplets (and similar combinations).
Likewise the outer movements (especially the last) uses
sextuplets against straight rhythms in the piano to
pull the rhythm around and allow "almost" clashes which
would sound too rough if explicit but just add tension
when spread out rhythmically. All 3 movements start
with the piano as part of the orchestra, only gradually
coming into prominence. Even there I liked to give the
orchestra more of a role than it usually gets in piano
concertos. I particularly like to have the piano almost
disappear in the maelstrom to then emerge out of
it.
There are another 2 piano Concerto's partly written,
which is why I've dared to call this no.1!
SHEET MUSIC