First performance by the Wichita Symphony.

PROGRAM NOTES BY MICHAEL BROWN, COMPOSER AND PIANIST

Concerto for Piano and Strings is written to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Ludwig Van Beethoven’s birth. Having spent innumerable hours of my life studying, performing, and obsessing over his ingenious creations, Beethoven has played a pivotal role in shaping my dual musical existence as a pianist and composer. 

My concerto seeks to integrate my own musical language with that of Beethoven, by weaving musical fragments of his various works into my own harmonic landscape. Structurally my work adheres to a similar form of Beethoven’s Concerti with the first movement in sonata-form, followed by a slow movement, and a rondo finale. Specific Beethoven references include long, pedal markings blurring harmonies and sonorities as in the Largo of the Third Piano Concerto, extended use of trills, and the interweaving of small motivic fragments throughout the work. While his own motives are at times easily recognizable in my concerto, they appear at other times more subtly embedded into the texture. The drama between the piano and strings, the virtuosic cadenzas and rhythmic pulsations are also elements that are inspired by Beethoven’s monumental Piano Concerti. I have often dreamed of being a fly on the wall observing him playing his own creations, and I hope this work may pay homage to him from the perspective of my being both a composer and a pianist. The work is co-commissioned by the Gilmore Keyboard Festival in Kalamazoo and NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra in Wroclaw, Poland.

Concerto for Piano and Strings was composed at the Aaron Copland House in Peekskill, NY in January and August 2019, and in many other places. 

Notes by Michael Brown, pianist and composer, 2020

Michael Brown appears by arrangement with Sciolino Artist Management.