Piano Concerto (Massenet) B major, is a slow, deliberate promenade featuring the piano prominently throughout. There are sweeping orchestral flourishes in the middle of this movement. Eventually the music comes to a restful reprise of the theme, and the movement ends quietly in a fading murmur. The third movement, in C minor, is subtitled "Airs Slovaques", alluding to the ersatz Slovak-like dance tune Massenet uses throughout. The brief 2/4 section towards the end evokes the virtuosic passages of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, before returning to the main theme, perpetually accelerating into tumbling passages in the piano and flamboyant outbursts in the orchestra. Massenet adds
Rhapsodies for Orchestra Rhapsodies for Orchestra Rhapsodies for Orchestra is a single-movement orchestral composition by the American composer Steven Stucky. The work was jointly commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and the BBC for the Philharmonic's European tour in August and September 2008. The piece had its world premiere August 28, 2008 in Royal Albert Hall at The Proms, with the New York Philharmonic performing under conductor Lorin Maazel. In approaching Stucky with the commission for a new piece, Maazel suggested to Stucky that the composition be "something rhapsodic". Stucky later wrote, "I ran to the dictionary for help. The more I thought