Brought up as a violinist, Rózsa naturally gravitated toward string instruments as a composer. Of his five concertos for solo instrument(s) and orchestra, only one applies hammers rather than bows to the featured instrument. As if to highlight the difference, Rózsa makes his Piano Concerto a fairly percussive work, although it is no more dissonant than, for example, Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 3. Like all Rózsa's concert works, this concerto is almost defiantly tonal, yet never sappy; its melodic turns and much of its rhythmic inspiration derive from Hungarian folk music, without becoming musical travelogue. The concerto was commissioned by Leonard Pennario, and is tailor-made to that pianist's style; in the words of Christopher Palmer, "It is a big work, a virtuoso showpiece in the grand romantic manner, dramatic, rhetorical, flamboyant, but cogent and vital nonetheless."

The concerto's percussiveness manifests itself up front, with an introductory timpani motto. The main matter of the sonata-form first movement-marked Allegro energico-is tough, no-nonsense stuff. It has the grim bustle of Rózsa's film noir scores, now in a pronounced Hungarian idiom. The rhetorical devices are sharply marked and heavily stressed. The pianist's martellato passagework is echoed at one point even by the string players, who briefly slap their instruments with their bows.

The second movement, an Adagio, offers some respite. The piano writing sparkles more gently, and there's more allowance for woodwind filigree. The movement is something of a Hungarian nocturne, though a nocturne at a rather busy time of evening; even so, it's not still and sinister enough to call to mind Bartók's "night music" style. The last movement, Vigoroso, returns to the aggressive mood of the beginning, but now it's even more frantic, even occasionally brutal. Heavy ostinatos and flashy runs up and down the keyboard characterize the pianist's part. It's very much a darker, angrier version of the finale of Ravel's G-major concerto, with frenzied, displaced accents substituting for Ravel's jazzy jittering.

© James Reel, Rovi