Concerto No. 2 for Piano (1998)
(Piano Concerto No. 2)

“Late in Babbitt's 2nd Piano Concerto, (mm. 507-510) a swirling chaos of notes seems somehow to magically coalesce into C# Major, so strongly that the passage seems to be the "climax" of the work. At another point in this piano concerto, (mm. 203-204) there is a series of what sound like chromatically descending clusters, with the pitches distributed around the ensemble, in the midst of other activity--this chromatic descent, as something vaguely familiar or simple to me, is what I ‘grab onto’ in this part of the piece. Originally, I heard this moment without knowing its scored representation. In fact, the process of finding this moment in the score was quite difficult--it doesn't "look like" what it sounds like at all, due to the fact that the descent's pitches are distributed between horns, piano, marimba and clarinets, all of which look, on the score, as if they are doing their own thing. There are no visual clues that the instruments might coalesce in this way. I enjoy the feeling, while listening, of not knowing quite what to do or what to grab onto, mentally and emotionally, in what I'm hearing. These experiences were probably not intended by the composer (though Babbitt's music in particular is filled with triadic arpeggios and other tonal puns, which are so numerous and ubiquitous that intention seems inevitable).” (Adapted from Christopher Bailey's essay "Serial Structures as Fragmentation of the Familiar")