Modern piano concerti

Are there any piano concerti from the past, say, 40 years which really stand out for you? Or let’s say from the Barber Concerto (1960) onwards?

I was listening to the Lutoslawski and Salonen PCs and enjoyed them in different ways – the Lutoslawski was more challenging yet set a beautiful mysterious mood in the first mvt; the Salonen slow movement was quite beautiful too – how he brought the timpani in towards the end of a bright piano passage was really nice.

Any other works you like?

I have this Hough disc and love it :

Liebermann: Piano Concertos - CDA66966 - Lowell Liebermann (b1961) - Hyperion Records - MP3 and Lossless downloads

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I don’t remember having heard anything after the Shost-2 I’ve liked actually (though I’m not familiar with Liebermann’s concertos). Pär Lund here in S wrote a symphonic poem of sorts for piano and orchestra in the 00s which is very gripping, but he had to write it extremely quickly and you can tell it has placeholder music and roughly stitched together sections all over it. If he ever gets round to finishing it however, I would like that.

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Yeah I am always in and out of modern and contemporary music – like periods of listening for 2 - 4 weeks and then not again for a year or two. Now’s one of those times.

Listening to the Ligeti now – what I suppose is the second movement is just breathtaking (a few woodwinds set a very spooky & sparse mood). This guy was a genuinely great composer.

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I like a few of the Shchedrin concertos, 1-3 in particular.

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To really sit down with Ligeti’s music is one of my still unfulfilled promises to myself. I like his Musica Ricercata, but I really haven’t cared for anything else from him (maybe aside from Vertige Wang recently played, which did leave a dent). But I also think that’s since I don’t know anything else well enough. One day I will make a more thorough effort with his Etudes, and maybe this PC too.

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Ligeti Concerto is awesome! I actually listened it live once, Andrey Gugnin was a soloist. He told me it’s really hard.

There is great recording by Aimard.

I have to listen Salonen. It was dedicated to Bronfman and I remember in one interview that he said there was one extremely difficult passage and that he would need a year to practice it and still it would be question if it would came out. So, Salonen re-wrote it, although it was note easy after it.

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Randomly, Brad Mehldau is premiering his own piano concerto in a couple of weeks. I’ll post it when I get the bootleg. Should be unique.

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I really like this, I think it’s from the 50’s so even later than modern :dong:
Mix of bartok and messiaen with a particularly furious last mov.

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Right, there’s Khrennikov too. I haven’t listened to his music in a very long time now, but I remember I liked at least one of his concertos (I think the one Kissin played).

I uploaded a video of Khrennikov playing his own PC 2.