The Five Piano Concertos

Abstract

Beethoven's five piano concertos are more closely associated with his appearances as a pianist than any other group of works. The immediate evidence for this is that he lost interest in piano concertos when he was compelled by advancing deafness to give up appearing in public. He had to hand over the last and greatest of these concertos, the Fifth in E flat, to his pupil Czerny to perform, and a sixth in D major came to a halt as a sketch in 1815. On the other hand, Beethoven particularly favoured the piano concerto in his earlier years, when he would set himself unstintingly before the public. This is shown particularly by the two concertos from the 1790's (Nos. 1 and 2). For years Beethoven altered and polished them — always in connexion with his public appearances — before he released them in print. In this way he put into them much of his tried and tested concert technique and improvisatory skill. The effect he produced with these assets cannot be better described than in the words of Czerny, who expatiated on the subject in a London periodical: "His improvisation was most brilliant and striking. In whatever company he might chance to be, he knew how to produce such an effect upon every hearer that frequently not an eye remained dry, while many would break out into loud sobs; for there was something wonderful in his expression in addition to the beauty and originality of his ideas and his spirited style of rendering them. After ending an improvisation of this Kind he would burst into loud laughter and banter his hearers on the emotion he had caused in them. 'You are fools!' he would say. Sometimes he would feel himself insulted by these indications of sympathy. 'Who can live among such spoiled children'?' he would cry, and only on that account (as he told me) he declined to accept an invitation which the King of Prussia gave him after one of the extemporary performances above described." This is a reference to Beethoven's trip to Berlin in 1796, when he performed at least one of the two concertos — probably No. 1 in C major. However, he was also pursuing other designs with his concertos. He lets the cat out of the bag in a letter to Breitkopf in 1801: "Musical politics compel one to keep the best concertos to oneself for a time." This means he regarded them as the composer's property, which he did not want to see others using, at least for a good while. That is why these concertos were not passed to the publishers until several years later. A further consequence of these "politics" was that when the C major Concerto eventually appeared as Op. 15 in 1801, it was called No. 1. although it was the second to be written. It was conceived in 1795-96, which is to say before the concert tour to Prague and Berlin, and in fact was probably written specially with that in view. A young composer for the piano — which was how the young Beethoven saw himself — simply owed it to himself to take a new concerto with him on a trip. It is from Prague, too, that we obtain the first reliable information about a performance of it.