Cowell’s Piano Concerto at Symphony Mavericks Festival Reviewed

From San Jose Mercury News:

Cowell completed the concerto in 1928, but didn’t live to see its first complete performance in the United States; that took place in 1978. It’s a wild work, with much of the solo part built around tone clusters — slabs of contiguous notes, generally hewing to the piece’s larger dimensions, its harmonic contours. Look it up on YouTube or CD; existing performances aren’t all that gratifying, often sounding like harsh, paint-splashed clobberings.