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which piano concerto is, to you, the most peak piano concerto, like the most piano concerto that has ever concertoed for piano for me it's a toss-up between Saint-Saens 2 and Liszt 1

this is NOT what is your favorite piano concerto this is which concerto makes you go “well that certainly is a piano concerto”

I go back and forth on whether or not Chopin’s Grande polonaise brillante is Peak Piano Concerto or the opposite based on the fact that it’s just the piano doing himbo things for 10 minutes while the orchestra barely remembers it exists

Peak Concerto Elements: -piano & orchestra fight -orch gets the cool part and pianist is given busywork exercise like a toddler with a teething biscuit -flashy solo audience-impressing bit that isn’t actually that hard -actually hard solo bit that audience is less impressed by -Big Trill

More Peak Concerto Elements: -Oops! All Chords -cadenza idea: what if scales and arpeggios, but in octaves -whacking away at the outer registers of the keyboard -composer reminds you that they can write chamber music too :)

btw absolutely dragging myself here because I LOVE big trills and octaves and went ahead and wrote them into my own cadenza (old video from the bad place two years ago)

Similarly, when I think piano concerto I think of this Monty Python sketch youtu.be/DB_lKSNwZZM?...

YES. I was trying to remember what this was from