Piano Concertino

Solo piano and orchestra
Date of composition: 1994

PROGRAM NOTES:

Completed in 1994, the Piano Concertino was written in memory of my longtime friend and musical colleague, Yvar Mikhashoff.  In spirit, the music itself is very much about Yvar, even though it’s in a idiom that he was never fond of learning and playing.  But I wrote it about him, an American musician with an extensive career in Europe.  Therefore, it is decidedly American in its energy level and rhythm, and in part European in its handling of pitch and harmony.  My original models were the Bach keyboard concertos, because they are jazzy and rock-like and charged with unflagging energy and optimism.  To me, that was Yvar!  I also appreciate the way baroque keyboard parts are integrated into the orchestra itself.  That’s not Yvar: he liked to be the star.  However, I didn’t want a concerto with its separate movements, but instead a less formal design that might easily accommodate the kind of wit I perceive in the Stravinsky Piano Concertino.  Another Yvar reference occurs about halfway through the piece, at which point you will detect a soupçon of the tango.  During the 80’s Yvar commissioned over a hundred composers from around the world to write tangos for him.  This project became known as The International Tango Collection.  Not only did Yvar play tangos, he was for a time a professional ballroom dancer and an expert on the form.  Following this brief tango reference, there is a stretch of sad, wistful music which is perhaps the formal déploration, and then a wind-up to a brilliant, loud ending on which Yvar, always a performer in the grand virtuoso tradition, would have insisted.

                                                                                                                        -James Sellars

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