The concerto is scored for solo piano, three flutes (one doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets in A, two bassoons, two horns in E, two trumpets in E, three trombones (two tenor, one bass), tuba, timpani in D and A, cymbals and strings.
Also, while the final version of the First Concerto could be considered a soloist's showpiece, the Second shows Liszt attempting to confirm his compositional talent while distancing himself from his virtuoso performance origins.
Liszt is less generous with technical devices for the soloist such as scales in octaves and contrary motion; instead of an overbearing virtuoso, the pianist often becomes an accompanist to woodwinds and strings.
This concept was one of thematic metamorphosis — drawing together highly diverse themes from a single melodic source.
With Liszt, however, thematic transformation would become a compositional device to which he would turn time and again—in the symphonic poems, the Faust and Dante Symphonies, and the B minor Piano Sonata.
"[3] With his Second Piano Concerto, Liszt took the practice of creating a large-scale compositional structure from metamorphosis alone to an extreme level.
For Liszt to so radically alter the music's notation while remaining true to the essential idea behind it shows a tremendous amount of ingenuity on his part.
His knowledge of the structure of this single-movement concerto was of as great an importance to his musical development as his study of Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy.
It is the business of the interpreter to show us how a general pause may connect rather than separate two paragraphs, how a transition may mysteriously transform the musical argument.
By some process incomprehensible to the intellect, organic unity becomes established, the "open form" reaches its conclusions in the infinite.
In his revisions, Liszt achieved as great or greater effect than his initial concept for many passages by using simpler means.
Liszt performed similar simplifications with the Transcendental Etudes and Grandes études de Paganini.
For instance, he wrote Johann von Herbeck, then director of the Vienna Philharmonic, "In case pianist Hans von Bülow should make his appearance at the Philharmonic concert he will, on my advice, not play my A-major Concerto (nor any other composition of mine) but just simply one of the Bach or Beethoven concertos.
This was after the incident in that city over Peter Cornelius's The Barber of Baghdad and not long before Liszt would resign as music director there.