Anders Hillborg’s 70th birthday celebrations in Stockholm will begin on 10 January when Emanuel Ax and Ryan Bancroft give the Swedish premiere of Hillborg’s Piano Concerto No.2 – the MAX Concerto with the Stockholm Philharmonic. They are set to continue on 18 and 19 January, when Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts a Jubilee concert with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in which they are joined by the Swedish Chamber Choir, Eric Ericson Chamber Choir and soloists Ida Falk Winland, Hannah Holgersson, Theo Hillborg, Jan-Erik Gustafsson, and Eldbjørg Hemsing. Between them they 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).

Hillborg’s Piano Concerto No.2 received its world premiere from Emanuel Ax and Esa-Pekka Salonen with the San Francisco Symphony in October 2023, where it was lauded by critics. In February Ax performs the 22-minute piece with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Eun Sun Kim; it was commissioned for Emanuel Ax by the San Francisco Symphony with the generous support of John Kongsgaard.

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. ‘Mist’, in the shape of divided strings, then settles. From it a tinkling ‘Toy Piano’ emerges. 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. ‘Ascending piano’ climbs to a sweeping finale before the music recedes into the distance. 

 

…vivacious, funny, heroic, eloquent, plain-spoken, thoughtful and wholly irresistible…This is a work in which constructive ingenuity and the pleasure principle walk arm in arm… It includes a couple of delectable sections labelled “Toy Piano,” in which sparse, high-pitched

patterns cast a crystalline spell…[Hillborg] writes with a generous, expressive touch. You can’t help but love the result.

San Francisco Datebook (Joshua Kosman), 13 October 2023

 

…a fascinating ball of fun…The music’s most remarkable and winning characteristic is the merging of the piano with sections of the orchestra. High jangling notes from the piano are matched with every chiming sound available from the percussion. Little piano motifs are played simultaneously by piccolo or other wind instruments. Active tumbling figures in the piano are set against sheens of string sound.

San Francisco Classical Voice (David Bratman), 16 October 2023

 

…it is an often nakedly emotional, at times tender work…[it] opens big, in the tradition of late 19th-century piano concertos. But it soon evokes the Impressionism of Debussy and Ravel on the keyboard and organ-like sonorities from the orchestra. Without ever gainsaying his own distinctive voice, the composer accrues, magpie-like, an amalgam of other sonic signatures for this work…All this in just 20 minutes, at which point the concerto comes to a gentle, fading end, concluding with neither bang nor whimper, but instead something of an organic dissolve.

Wall Street Journal (David Mermelstein), 13 October 2023