Copland wrote only two concertos—this one for piano in the 1920s and, two decades later, the popular clarinet concerto. Both have strong elements of popular music and use the same form: a song-like first movement is linked by a cadenza to a fast and rhythmically complex final movement. Along with "Music for the Theatre, " this is Copland's most jazz-influenced work. It is not Gershwinesque, though. The jazz element is present not so much in the tunes as in the underlying harmonic and rhythmic basis of the score, which sounds thoroughly classical in a 1920s-modern way. The sound is brash, opening with a typical Copland "proclamation" figure on brass, the melodic basis for the whole score. The first movement is an urban nocturne; the final one is driving and not a little violent. This is the harder-edged Copland which was the rule before he deliberately popularized his style in the 1930s.

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