The Concerto for Orchestra is an orchestral composition in five movements by the American composer Jennifer Higdon.
"[2] Reviewing a performance by the Mannes College The New School for Music Orchestra, Allan Kozinn of The New York Times lauded the piece as "accessible but technically demanding" and wrote, "Like the concertos for orchestra by Bartok and Lutoslawski, this is a showpiece that makes demands on every section and often calls for unusual timbres: the quickly descending violin glissandos, which create an almost electronic effect in the third movement, for example, or the eerie bowed percussion sounds that open the fourth."
Kozinn further remarked:Combinations of strings and bells yield a magical, sparkling effect, and some of the woodwind passages approach that spirit from a different direction, with allusions to the brisk descending clarinet lines that animate Bernstein’s "Candide" Overture along the way.
Ms. Higdon also provides long stretches of fast-bowed, percussion-supported, muscular orchestral writing, particularly in the opening movement and the finale, when both the score and this young orchestra were at their fiery best.
[3]Conversely, Andrew Clements of The Guardian called the piece "supremely forgettable" and "an example of American contemporary music at its most vacuous, a noisy mishmash of early 20th-century styles".