Trends in the development of the foreign instrumental concerto at the turn of the 20th – the first quarter of the 21st century
Authors: Vashchenko Olena 
Published: August 2024

Statement of the problem. The instrumental concerto remains one of the most important genre spheres of composer’s interest at the turn of the 20th–beginning of the 21stcentury, which is confirmed by the wide palette of works written by artists of various national schools and directions. Among them are Philip Glass, Calevi Aho, Tan Dun, John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Unsuk Chin, Dai Fujikura, Avner Dorman, Errollyn Wallen, Missy Mazzoli, Kaija Saariaho, Sampo Haapam&#228;ki, Ney Rosauro, Peter Mahajdik, Jukka Tiensuu, Li-Ying Wu and others. Different in their style, aesthetic level, compositional principles and performance techniques, the latest works in different ways reflect the modern stage of the development of the instrumental concert, and raise the natural question of what exactly unites them. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. Recent research and publications has shown that current studies of the concerto of the late 20th and early 21st centuries mainly focus on the work of one artist, a national school – Ukrainian (N. Zymohliad, K. Slipchenko), Spanish (F. J. T. Ruiz), Polish (A. Nowak), on a specific instrument, such as the oboe (V. Martynova), the piano (N. Zymohliad, A. Nowak), the bayan and the accordion (O. Vasylenko), the domra (K. Slipchenko), or on the concerto for orchestra (Ruiz, 2023). In spite of some important observations about the soloist’s “modern virtuosity” (A. Nowak), “genre interaction” (K. Slipchenko), compositional “reduction” (N. Zymohliad), attempts to identify the general trends in the development of the foreign concert at the turn of the 20th – early 21st century have not yet been carried out, which determines the novelty of the chosen research topic. Its purpose is to identify common features of foreign instrumental concerts of the late 20th and the first quarter of the 21st centuries, on the basis of which the key trends in its development at the current stage will be highlighted. In accordance with the objective, the following research methods were chosen: historical; structural and functional; comparative one. Research results and conclusion. The analysis showed that in the field of instrumental concert the trends declared in the 20th century continue to develop, in particular, the mixing of stylistic elements, interaction with distant genre models, the weakening of the principle of sonata and the role of the sonata form or its displacement by other structures. At the same time, a number of recent phenomena that arose in the 20th century, but mostly did not before spread to the instrumental concert genre, are observed, in particular: the expansion of the range of instruments that can be used as soloists (turning to ethnic instruments, involving species or several representatives of the group within the framework of one work, invention of instruments, and its structural modification); diversification of the timbre-expressive and virtuosic palette of the soloist due to the arsenal of extended performance techniques; and hence the new virtuosity of the soloist.