Piano Concerto No. 3 (Lindberg)

Composition of the concerto took 22 months, possibly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. collaborating with the composer up through the final week before the premiere: "trimming things" and "cleaning up ... It’s a work in progress”, according to Lindberg in a Q&A after the premiere. Wang added, “The piece will grow with how we play it.” Lindberg cites the Bartók Piano Concerto No. 3 and the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 as inspirations for this concerto, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, The piano concerto has a duration of roughly 32 minutes and is written in three movements in a conventional fast-slow-fast plan, or "a concerto in three concertos." Overall, the concerto is huge; Lindberg says "it’s the biggest piece I’ve written." In terms of the technical skills demanded from the soloist, this is considered the most difficult among Lindberg's three piano concertos, since he wrote it specifically to fit Wang's immense abilities. ==Reception==

The world premiere drew generally positive acclaim about the performance by the soloist Wang, while opinions about the composition itself were more mixed. Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle found "his insistence on filling in every corner of the sonic canvas - more wearying than enlightening", though "there’s a vibrancy and inventive energy to his music, even at its most overwritten, that commands attention and engagement. ". Jari Kalliio was most enthusiastic; he wrote in Finnish Music Quarterly: "The new concerto fuses together the composer’s virtuosic grasp of the musical form, exuberantly pianistic writing and riveting orchestral mastery, giving rise to a thirty-minute score of special magnificence" and "is on its way to become a repertory item." ==References==