Panufnik made a dramatic escape from his homeland, Soviet-dominated Poland, in 1954. Soon thereafter he settled in England and became conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. After 1959 he was able to retire from all regular positions and devote his time to composing. His compositions often restrict themselves to pre-defined sets of intervals or notes, and he tended to use geometric patterns as models in building his music.

When he agreed to write a piano concerto he first set the following aims: to write a virtuoso work, implying display of the soloist's poetic sensitivity and technical ability; to explore the entire sonic range of the piano; to give the orchestra a significant, powerful role; and (this was a general goal of his) to impose very strong compositional discipline in order to achieve "maximum expression with minimum means."

The concerto is in three movements, amounting to about twenty-four minutes. The first movement is not in a sonata-allegro form; it is entitled "Entrada," is moderately fast in tempo, and at four and a half minutes functions as an introduction to the whole work. Panufnik uses a three-note cell consisting of a major second and minor second.

The second movement, Larghetto molto tranquillo, comprises quiet dialogues, not only between the piano and the orchestra but among the wind instruments and strings. In this movement Panufnik uses palindromes constantly and restricts his musical material to the two intervals of the cell from the first movement.

The third movement, Presto molto agitato, follows without pause with a violent eruption from the orchestra. The movement is based on a pair of intervals, the major and minor third, except for a lyrical middle section, which returns to the pair of seconds that is the basis of the second movement. At the end, Panufnik returns to the agitated music of the opening part of the movement.

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