Daniel Asia's 1994 Piano Concerto was commissioned by pianist André-Michel Schub and the Phoenix, Jacksonville, Chattanooga, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, and New Jersey symphonies, with funding from the Meet the Composer/Reader's Digest Commissioning Program. The work was premiered by Schub with Carl St. Clair conducting the Grand Rapids Symphony on Feb. 10-11, 1995.

As in all Asia's works from the mid 1990s, the difficulties await only the performers; the Piano Concerto is immediately accessible to listeners. Although it's scored for a hefty but not gargantuan orchestra-triple woodwinds and brass, four horns, four percussionists, harp and strings-this concerto is primarily the piano's show. The keyboard carries the narrative line with hardly a break, while the orchestra provides important commentary without taking over the story.

Asia's spare but optimistic style announces itself from the beginning. "The first movement opens with a simple theme, which is extrovert and affirmative," Asia writes. This opening leads to a bumptious tune played in unison by the orchestra and piano. The tune is freely developed in successive variations by the piano. Some variations remain extroverted, with angular lines and quixotic rhythms; others are introverted, with more regular rhythms and placid melodic lines. The movement ends briskly, but with a sense of disquiet.

The second movement is, for the most part, ruminative and ethereal. By its sheer length and musical weight, it is both figuratively and actually at the center of the concerto. Its overall shape is a sort of gradual unfolding. It contains simple melodic statements, bell-like passages, and sections that are almost incantatory. Cadenzas, or cadenza-like sections, are found throughout the movement. Its penultimate section is a chorale, which leads back to the movement's opening material, and a reposeful close.

The third and final movement regains the energy of the first, while synthesizing some of the harmonic implications of the second. A rondo in form, it's rhythmically playful and skittish, and very much a dance.

From the drily jaunty writing of the Allegro, through the delicate singing line of the slow movement (which takes on an especially cantorial coloring toward the end), to the nervous glitter of the finale, with pointillistic orchestral struts bracing a carefully crafted overall structure, this Piano Concerto perfectly represents the mature state of Asia's art.



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