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It's funny how most composers on this site like to think that a few cool-sounding sections melded together make a good piece of music. Unfortunately, thats not the case. Not to say this piece isn't fun to listen to, and its a little more well put-together than a lot of others I've listened to, but it really is just that: a few cool-sounding sections melded together. You repeat your main introduction, some thematic material, but you really don't do anything with it. Also, most of the orchestra, or a big chunk of it is playing almost all the time...that gets annoying. While the piano is constantly playing, and it is normally with the orchestra, it seems rarely a part of it, it seems rather detached, I don't know if you were going for that. You have a lot of chords in the piano that I'm sure you liked to think were "grandiose" but really they just sounded cheap. The little piano cadenzas you have are a nice idea, but you just kind of repeat the same notes for a while (e.g. mm. 91 and 161). I do like your use of crescendo and decrescendo though. While it brought expressiveness to the piece, the vast majority of it was loud, which also got annoying. The actual harmony was cluttered and poorly orchestrated (try a little more modest approach to your scoring for winds, meaning use it a bit or scarcely and less "richly" and see what happens). String writing was good from what I could see for the most part though. Pardon my honesty, this really is better than I make it out to be, I tend to point out my criticisms rather harshly, but hopefully you can interpret this tactfully.
Best,
Nico
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