Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (2016)

Shrouded in a percussion-filled haze, Matthew Aucoin’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra began virtually unpitched, even the two-note piano chords sounding indistinctive upon entering. This developed into a thin-textured, descending line that pianist Conor Hanick transformed into a thought-provoking, meandering quip. At moments, the first movement battled along, aligning itself to the romanticism and dexterity of Liszt or Rachmaninov while carrying true influence from the likes of Ginastera and Ligeti. Never ceasing in its tenseness, the first movement felt like a struggle between piano and orchestra. Surprisingly, the orchestra seemed to carry more melody than the piano, which offered a rich variety of textures and colors. Nevertheless, the piano part was incredibly virtuosic, physical motions similar to a Liszt Concerto while emulating a Bartókian idea.

The second movement began with a D-flat major chord that repeated over and over (and over and over). The first two repeated notes sounded like the ghost of Schubert, but the longer it repeated, the more settled Hanick looked, and the more unsettled the audience felt. The piano inched into an exuberant expansion, transitioning into a repetitive chorale which, if the repeated notes had dissipated and harmonies changed ever so slightly, might have sounded similar to a Bach prelude. Glued together by reiterated sounds, the soloist requires an iron-clad focus, which tripped Hanick only once (very subtly) in one of the middle sections. When asked what the motivations were behind this movement, Aucoin mentioned that the first movement felt so large and so battle-like that he wondered, “What would happen if I just kept playing this D-major chord?” And so, the second movement was born out of an exhaustion and much-needed rest from the first movement. At times, it felt outright unpianistic, but its repetition created a sense of calm and familiarity that the piece needed.

The third movement brought the pianist clamoring out of the second movement, grasping to achieve a new melody, though the orchestra pulled the pianist back into the tradition of the first movement. The third movement came off like a short hiccup to finish the piece, exhausted after the long journey which Aucoin sent the orchestra and pianist. Rose’s straight, to-the-point conducting provided the orchestra with the beat that it needed and not much else; this ensemble rode the storm on its very own, its deep sense of knotted textures and ever-changing colors evident throughout the piece.

It began with ominous drumrolls, evoking a procession of the condemned. The solo piano, played with a deft touch and cool sparkle by Conor Hanick, made a mad dash for freedom, spurred on by the orchestra. Octave doublings gave the sound a primeval urgency. The second movement rested on a relaxed pulsing rhythm in the piano; if you breathed along, you’d calm down, until whistling winds and thudding drums signaled a slide from contentment to resurging anxiety, glockenspiel joining the piano in insistent alarm. The perpetual motion of the first movement returned in the brief finale, the soloist fighting a tidal surge in counter motion with the orchestra. Hint, BMOP/sound: I’d buy that CD.

The first movement used percussion to insinuate a doomsday atmosphere, and the syncopations of this movement were frequently violent. Rhythmic units would shorten in length and leap into an almost arrhythmic free fall as phrases went on as though they were rushing to a precipice. These moments of almost grotesque scherzando stood beside naked and naive tonal arpeggios and bare fifths oscillating with potential energy. Although some of these simpler moments were disruptive to the movement, it came to a conclusion spectacularly in its dark mode.

What Aucoin termed a “consolation,” the second movement’s beginning was brilliant in its portrait of hesitancy and self-enforced optimism. The pianist repeated (to himself, it seemed) the platitude of a single major chord in a simple and ponderous recurring rhythm. When Hanick finally switched to a new chord, listeners experienced the protagonist’s slow renewal, one that proved dreamlike, yet shadowed occasionally by the first movement’s darkness. It was achingly beautiful nonetheless…The last movement went quickly and had a wonderful zip to it. Like the first movement, it featured an idiomatic but wonderfully weird cadenza that Hanick performed exquisitely.