Piano Concerto (Salonen)

The Piano Concerto has duration of roughly 33 minutes and is composed in three numbered movements. The second movement features a musical "sci-fi nightmare" titled "Synthetic Folk Music with Artificial Birds," about which Salonen wrote in the score program notes:

I imagined a post-biological culture, where the cybernetic systems suddenly develop an existential need of folklore. Composing intelligence creates music that somehow relates to an area that long time ago was called the Balkans. All this is accompanied by bird-robots. A Homage to Stanisław Lem.[1]

Reviewing the world premiere, Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times highly praised the concerto, writing, "From its orchestral introduction (a halting yet urgent march with fidgety dotted-rhythm string figurations and lumbering syncopated riffs in the timpani and drums) to its incandescent conclusion (with the tentative introductory music turned into a din of pungently harmonic triumph), this 30-minute concerto in three movements pulls you along its inexorable path." Tommasini added, "I cannot remember the last time a premiere at the New York Philharmonic won such an enthusiastic ovation."[2] Fiona Maddocks of the London Evening Standard similarly opined, "Gleefully motoric outer movements contrasted with a lyrical and nostalgic central section, which sang out in homage to Rachmaninov".[3]

Conversely, Ivan Hewett of The Daily Telegraph criticized Salonen's use of "European modernism" and called the work a "sprawling, ill-focused, windily rhetorical piece." Hewett added, "The sense of vacillation was painful."[4]

Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times later admonished criticisms of the concerto, writing, "Open-minded Americans (...) have enjoyed all that, finding not imitation but admirable absorption" and added, "Perhaps on encountering a new work, listeners latched on to what they already know."[5]