Onsdagens Europapremiär av en redan reviderad ”The MAX concerto” leddes av Kungliga Filharmonikernas chefdirigent Ryan Bancroft, vars intresse för nutida svensk musik tycks både påläst och genuint.

Konserten är skriven i en enda lång sats och mindre präglad av de lätt identifierbara Hillborgblocken än många tidigare orkesterstycken. Likafullt är musiken indelad i tio sektioner med målande rubriker. Här finns bekanta grepp som imitationen av ett leksakspiano, men i regel med mindre påtaglig igenkänningsfaktor. Istället är det ekot mellan solistiska motiv och orkesterinstrument som fångar uppmärksamheten i denna eleganta och mer eftertänksamma pianokonsert. Emanuel Ax är i sin tur en tillbakalutat virtuos förvaltare av solostämman, där noterade friheter antyder en båge mellan impressionism, minimalism och jazz.

Johanna Paulsson, Dagens nyheter, 11 January 2024

Anders Hillborg’s new piano concerto, written for Emanuel Ax, lit up Davies Symphony Hall with joyful insouciance and effortless creativity in its second performance on Friday evening. It was the highlight of a concert brimming with energetic music-making of the highest order.

‘The MAX Concerto’ – nicknamed by the Swedish composer to celebrate the eminent American pianist – burst out of the starting gate with grand arpeggios that harkened back to Beethoven and Grieg, then wended its way through fields of hazy chords, outbursts of pungent dissonance, devilishly complex piano finger-busters and a welcome range of dynamics and tempos. All of it shone with the exuberance and matter-of-fact virtuosity that have long characterized this pianist.

Although the orchestral colors and busy-ness might have made a delightful piece without the piano, every phrase dovetailed with whatever the piano was up to. Unlike most concertos, which figuratively pit the orchestra against the soloist, this one had a different aim. It got the entire team on the same side, encouraging each other at some points, soothing with achingly supple music at other times and revving up to big climaxes.

Harvey Steiman, Seen and Heard International, 15 October 2023

Anders Hillborg’s “MAX Concerto” Is a Fascinating Ball of Fun

The music’s most remarkable and winning characteristic is the merging of the piano with sections of the orchestra. High jangling notes from the piano are matched with every chiming sound available from the percussion. Little piano motifs are played simultaneously by piccolo or other wind instruments. Active tumbling figures in the piano are set against sheens of string sound.

David Bratman, San Fransisco Classical Voice, 16 October 2023

The new piano concerto by the Swedish composer Anders Hillborg is vivacious, funny, heroic, eloquent, plain-spoken, thoughtful and wholly irresistible.

It serves, in other words, as a musical portrait of pianist Emanuel Ax, who joined the San Francisco Symphony and Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen in Davies Symphony Hall Thursday, Oct. 12, to give the piece its triumphant world premiere.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of “The MAX Concerto” is its easy but uncompromised accessibility. At a time when audiences remain wary of contemporary music — slow to unlearn the lessons of past generations whose tastes were treated by too many composers with snobbish contempt — Hillborg (whose “Rap Notes” helped open the Symphony season) writes with a generous, expressive touch. You can’t help but love the results.

Joshua Kosman, San Fransisco Chronicle, 13 October 2023