Piano Concerto

Concerto for piano and orchestra was composed in 1999-2000 as a commission from BIT-20 Ensemble. The work is dedicated to Anne Marie Abildskov. I Allegro Volante e nervoso II Adagio innocente e semplice III Tempo de grande gioia IV Fluente ma tranquillo Hans Abrahamsen ‘The piano concerto starts entirely as I usually start, with this filigree in the piano and many simultaneous layers,’ Hans Abrahamsen has explained ‘The beginning is music that could continue almost minimalistically ad infinitum. But it doesn’t. Instead it has a seizure after just thirty seconds. It literally comes to a halt!’ There is no programmatic structure behind the four-movement course of the concerto, but a romantically minded listener may be tempted to interpret the development from a quick stalling of the familiar through the introduction (by the lyrical second movement) of something much more ‘innocent and simple’, as it says - something feminine, one feels like adding - to the third movement’s flashing firework display of a scherzo, which draws the curtain aside for a liberating rush of joy, as life after the advent of love. However, the undersigned assumes full responsibility for this interpretation. The piano soloist is the undisputed main character in the concerto, and plays almost constantly in the first three movements. It is only in the fourth movement that she takes a break and listens. ‘The piano stirs up an anthill’, is Hans Abrahamsen’s own description, ‘and it becomes almost operatic! It is as if the music is about to fall right out over the edge of the abyss at the drastic general pause to which the second movement, the key movement of the work, builds up.’ Characteristically for Hans Abrahamsen’s works, one can dig out layer upon layer of earlier pieces from below the surface of the piano concerto. But there are also hidden allusions, as well as obvious references, to the music of other composers. This is clearest in the second movement, where one finds an explicit reference to Mahler - ‘(Wie Mahler!)’ - at a point where the trumpet, fanfare-like, repeats the note C sharp. The third movement has a similar tribute to György Ligeti, who along with Per Nørgård and Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen has been among Hans Abrahamsen’s most important teachers. The piano concerto was commissioned by the BIT-20 Ensemble and premiered with Anne Marie Abildskov as soloist at the Ultima Festival in Oslo in 2000. Thomas Michelsen, 2002