At the time of his death in April 2011, Peter Lieberson had planned the present recording, a project he was never to hear realized. The present disc fills out our picture of Lieberson’s accomplishments in the concerto genre, placing the spotlight on two previously unrecorded large-scale works, the Piano Concerto No. 3 and the Viola Concerto. The compositions assembled here complicate the perception that Lieberson’s style evolved straightforwardly, the caterpillar of hard-as-nails maximalism metamorphosing overnight into the butterfly of sweet-smelling neo-romanticism, as exemplified in his masterpiece, “Neruda Songs”. The Piano Concerto No. 3 synthesizes elements from Lieberson’s previous efforts in the form, and brings the cycle to a brilliant and dramatic conclusion. Annotator Matthew Mendez calls the Viola Concerto “a big-hearted, eminently songful piece in the Walton mode.” Lieberson wrote that: “My entry into composing the Viola Concerto was through my love of the viola sound itself. It’s difficult for players, but the expression is very direct, so it’s not a difficult piece to hear.”
