“Alice Sara Ott simply wrote to me asking if I could compose a piano concerto for her. That was wonderful because I know her playing and am a fan of her work. She is a very open-minded pianist with incredible technical abilities and, more importantly, a very profound artist. She gave me free rein and trusted me from the very beginning. The piece has become a kind of portrait of her. I imagined her qualities as a pianist and tried to find things that would challenge and inspire her.

I think we challenged each other. I wrote the first movement and sent it to her. It has a kind of passacaglia in it that keeps rolling back, almost like a baroque lament, although it is not sad. There's a baseline essentially, that keeps coming, with interventions from the orchestra and very virtuosic moments from Alice. Alice said that she loved it, but that the piece might want a contrast. And she was right. So there's this lyrical opening in the middle of the first movement before it comes back with a dancelike opening. For me, that's really an example of a good collaboration, something that always really inspires me.

It's primarily a concerto for Alice, but while working on it, I also thought a lot about my older sister Jessica, a dancer and choreographer who had a huge artistic influence on my brother Erin and me when we were growing up together. She has been dealing with health issues for the past seven years. I incorporated a lot of her dancing energy into the piece so that it conveys a real sense of movement. There is also a lot of joy in it, because my sister always looks ahead to see the beauty and greater meaning in things. That's the feeling I want the piece to convey.”

Photo: Simon Pauly