Concerto for Piano Four Hands and Chamber Orchestra

‘The idea of the four-hand piano concerto is not new, but it has rarely been realised. There are of course reasons for this - it is above all a thankless task to play four-handed on one instrument, interfering with each other. But it also has its advantages - the sound of the instrument becomes more complex and extensive, it is, so to speak, the monologue of a double entity. And this feeling that someone is always ‘sounding on’ (albeit sometimes pausing) has influenced the sound illusion of the resulting double concerto from the very beginning. Now it is finished and I have returned to the multi-movement, single-movement form of the work that I have realised several times, which begins and ends slowly and in the meantime endeavours to present a contrasting sound world. But it is interesting that you repeatedly get a different answer to the same question. This time, too, the form has changed, with a predominantly jocular development of a lyrical-recitative material that initially hardly tends in that direction and a surreal-dramatic culmination. What would be the result of the next interrogation - if it came?’ (Alfred Schnittke)