Throughout his life, Witold Lutosławski presented diverse musical styles including Neoclassicism, Nationalism, and the Avant-garde. His sole Piano Concerto, however, was composed during his mature creative period, from 1987 to 1988. It is a masterpiece of the piano concerto genre, realized with delicate and highly sophisticated technique, incorporating a variety of factors such as elements of "aleatorism," tonal sonorities, climax formation, and the "chain form" devised by Lutosławski himself.

The work is structured in four movements, played attacca without pause between them. The introduction of the first movement presents quietly murmuring sonorities by the woodwind instruments. This ad libitum introduction consists of sound clusters generated as each performer individually repeats a specified melodic pattern. Here, one can observe an aspect of the "aleatoric" technique that Lutosławski frequently employed in the 1960s after encountering John Cage's music. However, in this work, the elements of indeterminacy do not expand further. The richly varied orchestral sonorities that follow, and the intricate passages woven into the piano part, are all meticulously notated in the score regarding pitch, rhythm, meter, and so forth (in contemporary music, these are often indicated by arrows or diagrams). Lutosławski himself emphasized this point, stating:

"There is no improvisation anywhere in this work. All the notes to be played are written down in detail. They must be reproduced precisely by the performers. The fundamental difference between the ad libitum sections and those in traditional notation is that in the former, the performers possess no common temporal divisions whatsoever. That is, each individual performer is in a state of solo performance and does not synchronize with the other performers. This creates a particular effect, namely, a flexible texture with rich and irregular rhythms, which cannot be obtained by any other method." [Translator's note]

In the second movement, the piano and orchestra engage in playful interplay (moto perpetuo). In the latter half, after a long, cadenza-like piano solo, the string instruments suddenly present the sound of an E-G#-B tonal triad. This triad is particularly striking as it again fades into serene yet austere sonorities. The beginning of the subsequent third movement also features a long piano solo that continues like a monologue, but in the latter half, an overwhelmingly dense tutti (all instruments playing at once) occurs. The fourth movement takes the form of a Baroque chaconne, i.e., a variation form. It also incorporates the "chain form" technique, which Lutosławski himself created. Here, there are layers played by the orchestra and layers woven by the piano. Each of these layers is divided into minute sections, but the beginning and end of these sections overlap with each other and do not conclude simultaneously. The music progresses as the two interlock and mesh, like intertwined chains. These two layers of the chain converge for the first time only in the concluding section of the movement, followed by a powerful recitative from the piano against an orchestral background, and then concluded by the ensuing coda.

The work was commissioned by the Salzburg Festival and premiered on August 19, 1988, with Lutosławski himself conducting the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Krystian Zimerman on piano. The performance duration is approximately 27 minutes.