Only Through Time Time is Conquered has one of the most unusual histories in Auerbach’s catalogue. The concerto was haunted for over twenty years by music that first came to her in a dream when she was fourteen years old, living in Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains.

In that dream, she heard strange, hypnotic music unlike anything she had known or written before. The opening of the concerto, as well as its entire second movement, grows from this dream-material. Auerbach has described the experience as one in which the music seemed to have chosen her, rather than the other way around.

For many years she searched for the proper vessel for this material. It moved through different forms, titles and versions, from a flute sonata to large orchestral conceptions including Symphony-Konzert and the withdrawn piano concerto, Op. 39.

Returning to the work in 2015 was not a simple revision. It meant facing old fears, memories and former versions of the self. The final version required a dangerous balance: to be true to the composer she had become without betraying the younger artist who first received the music.

• Dream-Music The concerto’s opening and second movement originate in a musical dream from the composer’s youth.
• Time The work continues Auerbach’s lifelong dialogue with time and its transformations.
• Ariadne’s Thread The concerto becomes a thread through the labyrinth of memory, joining the past to the present.

The present concerto is based on a series of earlier versions of a withdrawn piano concerto, Op. 39. That earlier work was first commissioned by Herbert and Beverly Gelfand before the final version was commissioned by the Stuttgart Philharmonic.

The first part of the withdrawn concerto was premiered on 18 November 1999 in Newark, with Lera Auerbach as soloist, the New Jersey Symphony, and David Commanday conducting. The complete withdrawn version was performed on 18 November 2000 in Yaroslavl, with Lera Auerbach as soloist, the Yaroslavl Philharmonic, and Murad Annamamedov conducting.

In 2015, the work re-emerged not as an archival restoration, but as a newly realized concerto. Its title — Only Through Time Time is Conquered — names the paradox of the piece: only by passing through time can the past be transformed.