Piano Concerto No.2, BB 101

In approaching the composition, Bartók wanted the music to be more contrapuntal. He also wanted to simplify his music (like many of his contemporaries), but his use of counterpoint in this piece makes for an extremely complicated piece of music. This aspect had proven particularly troublesome in the First Concerto, so much so, in fact, that the New York Philharmonic, which was to have given the premiere, could not master it in time, and Bartók's Rhapsody had to be substituted into the program. The composer himself acknowledged that the piano part in the Second Concerto is arduous and later said that the concerto "is a bit difficult—one might even say very difficult!—as much for orchestra as for audience." [dead link][contradictory] Bartók himself claimed in a 1939 article to have composed this concerto as a direct contrast to the First.