Concerto for Piano and Orchestra [Koncert na fortepian ] (1988)

His music is fastidiously neat too. There’s never a note out of place, even when Lutoslawski gives players the freedom to stray away from the conductor’s beat, and play the notes he’s given them in a joyous, uncoordinated melee.
At a glance this looks a little like the anarchy of John Cage, but really the two composers couldn’t be more different. Cage gave the players freedom so that the result will be a surprise (to him as well as the audience). Lutoslawski did it to make a particular expressive effect, what he called a “rhythmic richness”. That meant he had to imagine every possible outcome of the freedoms he gave to the players – a colossal undertaking. Lutoslawski started to make sketches for a piano concerto in the 1950s, but it wasn’t until 1988 that he completed it … it was worth the wait.

This is a beauty...

...music of great tension, ingenuity, and sorrow...

The orchestra begins with wood-wind birdsong, to which the piano adds its voice as though it were another bird, contributing delicate figurations which become the leitmotiv. Gradually this sweet miasma turns sour, with choppy dissent breaking out between soloist and orchestra before the antagonists finally settle into a harmonious relationship, punctuated by nods towards the Romantic concerto tradition.

…one of the great works of Lutosławski's final years, the Piano Concerto he wrote six years before his death, for Krystian Zimerman in 1988 […] how imaginatively the work riffs on the traditional concerto model, and on the relationship between soloist and orchestra. They come to a confrontational climax in the slow third movement, after which they part ways in the passacaglia finale.

Edgy and lyrical by turns, [Lutoslawski’s Piano Concerto] was written as late as 1987. Yet it incorporates many of the traditions of the nineteenth century piano repertoire. There are audible echoes of Liszt, Rachmaninov and Ravel, and strong reminders of Lutoslawski’s compatriot Szymanowski in its uneasy exoticism.

Here is another elegant enigma from Lutoslawski. The full-length, four-movement work for Krystian Zimerman, given its UK premiere at a well-attended Prom on Tuesday, engages and fascinates on many levels. Even the brilliant, delicate surfaces present a shifting spectrum of colour from a large orchestra with tantalizingly oblique virtuosity.
…The mastery of the guiding hand is never in doubt, and the teasing half-familiarity of the materials adds piquancy to the exploration of music that does not let go of all its secrets on one hearing.

The scherzo is a particularly dazzling exposition of this aspect of the composer’s powers; it is no less present in the opening movement, where those earlier models are hinted at with a tantalizing obliqueness that enables Lutoslawski to expand in his own direction. Equally remarkable is the massively challenging piano writing; Lutoslawski inserts a traditional cadenza in the slow movement, and refreshingly treats the instrument as a Romantic composer would, exploiting its resonances rather that exaggerating its percussiveness.