Piano Concerto.

Piano Concerto is a two-movement work for piano and chamber orchestra, in which each movement displays a different approach towards the traditional genre. In this work, I tried to both pay homage to the classical piano concerto and to work against tradition by letting the piano writing at various times be both virtuosic and simple, melodic and ornamental, foreground and background. The first movement is a study in perpetual motion. It begins with a triadic, fanfare-like motive with a clear triple-meter pulse, tonally centered on B-flat. After a brief introduction that dissolves into a chromatic descent, the piano plays rhythms that interact with the orchestra in gradually freer ways until the steady pulse idea is taken over by the orchestra and the piano is free to play improvisatory gestures. The piano and orchestra continue this alternation between strict rhythmic pulse and rhythmic freedom throughout the movement. The primary motive and the structure of the movement were inspired by the Baroque concerto form, in which the fanfare motive acts as a ritornello between the contrasting sections. The second movement presents the piano and orchestra interacting in subtler ways. The first section begins gently and gradually becomes more energetic and defined. In contrast to the first movement where the piano is nearly always the primary melodic voice, in the second movement the orchestra plays chordal melodies and the piano adds coloristic commentary. The opening music builds to an expansive section characterized by successive piano solos in which the minimal orchestral accompaniment allows the soloist to play with great freedom. The piece ends with a pulsing coda that references the fanfare motive of the first movement. There is no single theme or motive that prevails throughout this movement; rather there are melodic ideas that flow into one another, expanding and contracting through a series of motivic metamorphoses. Much of the modal harmonic language of the second movement was freely inspired by the music of northeastern Brazil, particularly musica armorial, a type of regional folk music which typically features scales with raised fourth and lowered seventh degrees.D.M.A.; Ph.D.Communication and the ArtsMusicUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/126617/2/3276089.pd