His numerous community activities, organisational work as well as need to earn his living considerably slowed down the creative process and Piano Concerto No. 1 was not finished until 1954. The composer had huge hopes for it, but did not expect the cold reception it got from reviewers assessing the score on behalf of the Polish Composers’ Union – the solo part was deemed highly complicated, at times unperformable, and the dramaturgy of the work as overloaded with unnecessary accumulations.  

The concerto has a traditional, three-movement structure, with the movements being contrasted agogically and expressively. In addition, the outermost movements break down internally into a number of smaller sections. While in the finale of the concerto this is justified by the variation form, in the first movement the arrangement of the successive sections into a sequence and linking them together with a recurring allegro ma non troppo segment may indeed have raised doubts among reviewers. 

The soloist’s part has features typical of Mycielski – a dense, multi-layered texture, elaborate harmony with a predilection for dissonant note combinations, motivic permutation resulting in constant “playing with” the established metrorhythmic order and frequent highlighting of the piano in the function of a percussion instrument.