On 12 October Emanuel Ax and the San Francisco Symphony premiere Anders Hillborg’s Piano Concerto No.2 – the MAX Concerto, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. The 22-minute work was commissioned for Emanuel Ax by the San Francisco Symphony with the generous support of John Kongsgaard. Ax will give the Swedish premiere of the work in January 2024 with Ryan Bancroft and the Stockholm Philharmonic; in February he performs the concerto with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Eun Sun Kim.
Like the recent concertos for viola (2021) and cello (2020), Hillborg’s Piano Concerto No.2 is cast in one unbroken span. ‘Grand piano’ opens the work with keyboard-traversing flourishes; the woodwinds reply with their own leapfrogging arpeggios, before the piano states its jubilant theme. ‘Mist’, in the shape of divided strings, then settles. From it a tinkling ‘Toy Piano’ emerges, which sees the soloist’s music-box shadowed by winds. In ‘Chorales and echo chamber’ the woodwinds shadow accents in the piano’s quasi-baroque writing before a glittering climax with crotales, bells, and glockenspiel.
‘Hard Piano’ then presents a toccata-like sequence of brilliant, jagged passagework that plunges into a cadenza. As if encouraged by the virtuoso display, the orchestra joins the piano for a grand, passionate statement of the opening theme. Its energies dissipate into ‘Soft piano’, with fluttering piano arpeggios backlit by high, sustained strings. ‘Ascending piano’ climbs to a sweeping finale before the music recedes into the distance.
Emanuel Ax previously premiered Hillborg’s Maggy in the Garden of Paradise (2020) with Yo-Yo Ma, an elegy for Maggy Kongsgaard; the renowned winemaking partnership of John and Maggy were dedicatees of Hillborg’s string quartet Kongsgaard Variations (2006), whose version for string orchestra received its first US performance from Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony in 2021.
In October Salonen opened the orchestra’s 2023/24 season with Hillborg’s capricious Rap Notes for rappers, coloratura soprano, and orchestra; the performance also featured an innovative use of live AI-generated visualisations. In January 2024 he leads Hillborg’s 70th birthday celebrations in Stockholm with a Jubilee concert with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. They are joined by the Swedish Chamber Choir, Eric Ericson Chamber Choir, with soloists Ida Falk Winland, Hannah Holgersson, Theo Hillborg, Jan-Erik Gustafsson, and Eldbjørg Hemsing, who between them perform Liquid Marble, Violin Concerto No.2, The Breathing of the World, Sirens (for two sopranos, mixed chorus and orchestra), and Kväll (soprano and violin).