Reinholdtsen Winnes Ugelvik

In the past, the piano concerto has often been themed around the individual soloist and his or her relation to the masses (the orchestra). Trond Reinholdtsen’s new piano concerto – entitled Theory Of the Subject – challenges this structure in the context of an era in which, in the composer’s view, ‘the rise of individualism grants everyone the status of a soloist, and the collective has become a utopia’.

The soloist’s role fluctuates between Maoist activism, depressive exhaustion (seen in a live video feed from the performer’s dressing room), resignation in the face of new technologies (represented by a player-piano that surpasses the soloist in mechanical virtuosity), and the total isolation from the public (retreating into a kind of shelter underneath the piano).