My relationship with the piano has been long and winding. I have this scene in my memory of a living room with big French doors to the garden and a piano in the middle, and me playing something on that piano, to the amazement of some elderly ladies. However, my family has never had much to do with living rooms with pianos in houses with gardens, so I have no idea where this picture comes from. Maybe I dreamt it, or rather saw it in some film and assimilated. Another memory that I have, and that one is most likely real, is a red toy piano, which is what I used to learn to perform Przybieżeli do Betlejem (Christmas Carol - They Hastened to Bethlehem) one-handedly (strictly speaking, just the main motif, with one finger) when I was five years old. Nobody was particularly amazed. A little later, inspired by the fascination of my father - an electronics engineer – with technical inventions (and his love of rock-like genres), the Unitra Eltronic 109 synthesiser made its way to our home. The instrument (also partly red) had a keyboard with full-size keys spanning five octaves (partly black and white and partly the reverse) and a fair number of buttons and knobs for modifying the tones. I spent a lot of time a this instrument. I was moderately interested in the keys, they were purely a tool for producing long, single notes or intervals; my attention was mainly focused on the knobs and buttons. I then moved on to an upright piano (I can’t remember the manufacturer), whose presence in the house was the result of another passion of my father – for old furniture. It was then that I discovered the advantages of the keys themselves. Above all in terms of repetition – single notes, intervals of thirds and fifths, and finally major-minor chords. After some time, I also added figuration to the repetition. This progress was noticed, interpreted as a talent, and it was decided to give it a chance. I was discouraged from formal education by one old lady, a teacher at the so-called music centre. The effect was instantaneous, and lasted a long while. So I continued to play the repetitions and figurations on my own, which peaked in a structure created at the very start of my teenage years that bore the hallmarks of a closed form, in A minor, bringing all these experiences together. After that, things varied. Sometimes I wanted something, sometimes I needed something, but I never came close to that peak again.

The Concerto per mezzo entered the climax of the fast movement, already together with the orchestra. 

(transl. Magdalena Małek-Andrzejowska)