Piano Concerto No.1 (2026)

PIANO CONCERTO No. 1

I. BERGHAIN
II. pour les deux doigts
       CADENZA
III. FINALE

This work is a love letter to the genre of the Piano Concerto, and is full of references to some of my favourite instances by Prokofiev, Beethoven, and above all Ravel. It was commissioned by Osnabrücker Symphonieorchester, Copenhagen Phil and the Danish Philharmonic Orchestra and written for the pianist Gustav Piekut.

The first movement is named after the world famous nightclub in Berlin. Aside from its obvious references to techno, the piece also seems to me to reflect experiences from those kinds of nightly adventures. For the first ten minutes, the pianist plays only in the outer registers of the piano, making the return to the middle register even sweeter. After a cadenza with fast hand-crossings, the musical climax is reached with the pianist playing the piano like a carillon, with their fists.

The second movement is a reworking of a movement from my piece KORTE BREVE FRA EN LANG REJSE, based on travel letters by Danish writer Ingeborg Stuckenberg. Here, she describes lively and overwhelming scenes from the streets of Genoa, and contrasts it first with the quiet of the cemetery Campo Santo, and then with the view of the city from her ship at dusk. The title is a reference to Debussy’s piano étude “pour les huit doigts”, in which the pianist is asked to only play with four fingers on each hand; however, in my movement the available fingers are reduced further to just the two index fingers. This is also intended as a loving nod to all the very young pianists who prefer this playing technique.

A full cadenza leads to a fast and joyous finale in which the pianist often plays with both hands a semitone apart and one hand much quieter, ideally leading to a sound reminiscent of the ”ombak” or shimmering resonance of Balinese Gamelan. The piece concludes in an epilogue with rain-like pizzicato and nostalgic bassoons.

- Matias Vestergård