He continued:The first movement, Mécanisme, is indeed like a machine, but not a perfect one: more like one of the Tinguely sculptures (or mobiles, they really defy all attempts to categorise them), which are very active, extroverted and expressive, but produce nothing concrete.
A metaphor I had in mind was indeed a tree, not a huge one, more like a slender willow that moves gracefully in the wind but returns always to its original shape and position.
"[2] Reviewing a later recording of the piece, Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times similarly noted the "stupefying challenges" of the piano writing.
[3] Arnold Whittall of Gramophone wrote, "Dichotomie (2000) for solo piano provides a useful digest of Salonen’s current compositional preoccupations.
Its first movement deploys aggressive but constantly shifting rhythmic mechanisms whose origins lie in Prokofiev, while its second seems closer to the flowing spontaneity of the Ligeti Etudes.