Piano Concerto No.4 in G major Op.58

Between the “Eroica” Symphony and the “Emperor” Concerto, heroic works on a large scale, Beethoven wrote a concerto for poet and orchestra. In fact, he wrote two, since the Violin Concerto, which was also composed in 1806, is another in the same vein. But the Fourth Piano Concerto defines the character of the soloist from the start with the highly unconventional entry of the piano, unaccompanied, in the first bar.

It is not a heroic entry but a poetic one with a disarmingly simple version of the first theme in G major. The soloist’s treatment of this theme alone - including, on his second entry, a particularly beautiful example in B flat at the top end of the keyboard - would mark him out as inspired without precedent in concerto form. In the development section he carries it to ever more remote tonal areas and, with the pianist in this inventive mood, the recapitulation is no more predictable: scarcely any of the melodic material appears here in its original form or colour, and the cadenza - whichever of the composer’s two alternatives the soloist chooses - adds yet another dimension of development.

In the Andante con moto, instead of encouraging and honouring the soloist’s flights of imagination, the orchestra puts his poetic powers to a severe test. The strings open the movement with a violent threat in E minor. The piano replies with quiet sincerity in the same key. The strings try again, and the soloist’s reply is even more gentle. A soft word turneth away wrath and, as the orchestral threats become less insistent, the piano becomes more expressive until it bursts into a short but passionate cadenza. The notion that Beethoven was thinking here of Orpheus taming the Furies has no basis in fact but it is certainly not impossible.

The last movement follows without a break, which is a not unusual event in Beethoven’s concertos of this period. What is unusual is that the E minor harmonies at the end of the Andante lead not to the expected G major at the beginning of the Rondo but to C major. The result is that the main theme is associated from the start with C major harmonies and that it insists on recalling them with every reappearance it makes - which becomes more and more fascinatingly anomalous as it becomes ever clearer that the true tonality of the movement is G major. In such an uncertain context the intervening episodes seem all the more liberated and Beethoven is understandably reluctant to correct the situation. Not even the impetus of the Presto coda can sweep the rondo theme off its C major feet. In the end, however, it does compromise by lending its rhythm to the final chords of G major.

Gerald Larner ©2004

The revolutionary, though not entirely unprecedented of the soloist in the first bar (rather than at the conventional point half way through the exposition) makes an indelible imprint of the first theme. Though a poetic rather than dramatic first entry - like so much of the writing for the soloist in this work - it seems to take the orchestra by surprise. The strings reply uncertainly in B major and, although the orchestra apparently recovers its composure in the first G major climax,, the strings offer a second theme not in that key but in A minor. It modulates to C major on the oboe and only then to G. There is a short third theme (with, like the second theme, prominent dotted rhythms) in D major, but the persistent quavers of the first theme are always somewhere in the orchestra’s conscience.

It is on that rhythm that the piano makes its second entry, to extend the first theme in several imaginative directions, including one particularly inspired B flat major variation at the top end of the keyboard. In a short pause in piano enterprise the strings introduce a new theme in D major, in the dotted rhythms which remain exclusive to the orchestra until, towards the end of the exposition, the piano offers its own poetic version of the orchestra’s third theme in D major.

After such treatment as the main themes have had already, there is no need for an exhaustive development. What development there is is devoted mainly to the first them, which is carried by the soloist to ever more remote tonal areas. The piano has the orchestra’s support in this until, provoked by the soloist’s introduction of a quite new theme in C sharp minor, several wind instruments offer a quiet reminder of the main theme. Conventionally the movement would be all over by now, apart from the formality of a recapitulation and a cadenza. But with the piano in this inventive mood, Beethoven’s recapitulation is no mere formality. Scarcely any of the melodic material appears here in its original form or colour, and the cadenza - whichever of the composer’s two alternatives the soloist chooses - adds yet another dimension of development.

In the Andante con moto, instead of encouraging and honouring the soloist’s flights of imagination, the orchestra puts his poetic powers to a severe test. The strings open the movement with a violent threat in E minor. The piano replies with quiet sincerity in the same key. The strings try again, and the soloist’s reply is even more gentle. A soft word turneth away wrath and, as the orchestral threats become less insistent, the piano becomes more expressive until it bursts into a short but passionate cadenza.

The last movement follows without a break, which is a not unusual event in Beethoven’s concertos of this period. What is unusual is that the E minor harmonies at the end of the Andante lead not to G major but to C major. The result is that, in a G major sonata rondo, the rondo theme is always associated with predominantly C major harmonies, which seems more and more fascinatingly anomalous as the real key of the movement establishes itself. After the first episode, with its lovely melody high in the right hand in the real dominant (D major), the rondo theme retains its attachment to C major. The recapitulation of the melody in G major makes no difference to the rondo theme, which still insists on its special identity. The piano actually persuades the other melody momentarily to join it in C major. Beethoven’s cadenza avoids the second subject altogether although a variant of the rondo theme does appear in unequivocal G major after that, not even the impetus of the Presto coda can sweep the rondo theme off its C major feet. It does, however, lends its rhythm to the final chords of G major.

Piano Concerto No.5 in E flat major Op.73 (“Emperor”)

Allegro

Adagio un poco mosso

Rondo: Allegro – Più allegro

The first four of Beethoven’s five piano concertos were all written for himself to perform as soloist. As he knew from the start, the piano concerto was an effective means of securing an ambitious and talented musician’s reputation both as a composer and as a keyboard virtuoso. That was clear from Mozart’s career in Vienna – an example Beethoven was so eager to emulate that at the age of 16 he made the journey from Bonn to meet the older composer and take lessons from him. In fact, because of the imminent death of his mother, he had to return home after only two weeks. By the time he had assembled the funds to return to Vienna Mozart had died too.

Beethoven knew Mozart’s later piano concertos so well that a period of study with him might not have made very much difference to his work in this area of the repertoire. But it might at least have helped him find an early solution to the problems of the Piano Concerto in B flat major which, even with Joseph Haydn as his mentor, took him so long to complete that its successor in C major was ready for publication first. The later work was consequently assigned an earlier opus number and is now universally known as Piano Concerto No.1. Beethoven’s debt to Mozart is clear in both these scores, as it is in No.3 in C minor in spite of its distinctively symphonic approach to the concerto form. Piano Concerto No.4 in G major, on the other hand, transcends any Mozart model. Its most striking and most innovative feature does have a precedent in Mozart, it is true. But the early entry of the piano in the Piano Concerto in E flat K.271 – a work which Beethoven probably didn’t know anyway – is no more than a witty intervention with little long-term effect. The solo piano passage at the start of Beethoven’s Concerto in G major determines the course of the whole of the first movement.

Conceived in 1804 and completed two years later, the Fourth Piano Concerto was first performed in public on a freezing cold December evening in the Theater an der Wien in 1808. Even on this occasion, in the middle of an all-Beethoven programme which lasted perhaps as long as four hours, the beginning of the concerto must have had an extraordinary effect. Far from sitting silently at the piano waiting for the orchestra to open the work, the composer-soloist made an immediate entry, quietly offering five bars of what would have sounded more like a polite question than a statement of the main theme of a concerto first movement. It is a question to which there is no ready answer: the strings reply tentatively and, as though disorientated, in the wrong key, recalling the piano’s repeated quavers while the theme in its definitive form eludes them.

Although the orchestra recovers enough of its customary initiative to introduce two important new themes – the first modulating speculatively as it passes from violins to woodwind, the other firmly asserted in D major by every available instrument – the repeated quavers continue to echo in the conscience. Woodwind and horns respond to the persistent prompting by reversing the situation: they restate the question in something like its original form, inviting the piano to make a reply on its second entry. Challenged in this way, the soloist proves to have no shortage of ideas, turning at first to aspects of the main theme and elaborating them in a rare combination of innovative instrumental and harmonic colouring. This second exposition is so diverse in its activity, making way for another new melody on violins but also reviewing earlier orchestral material, that the development section can afford to concentrate largely on the main theme. When it is emphatically recalled in G major by the piano at the beginning of the recapitulation it is no longer a question but an affirmative statement to which the orchestra now has no difficulty in responding in the same terms. The other main themes fall into line behind it, one of them making a magical re-appearance as the soloist emerges from the cadenza (Yevgeny Sudbin has chosen to play the longer and more elaborate of the two offered by Beethoven for this movement).

The Andante con moto is another test of the piano’s powers of persuasion. The strings open the movement with a violent threat in E minor. The soloist replies with quiet sincerity in the same key. The strings try again, and the reply is even more gentle. A soft word turns away wrath and, as the orchestral threats become less insistent, the piano becomes more expressive until it bursts into a short but passionate cadenza. The notion that Beethoven was thinking here of Orpheus taming the Furies has no basis in fact but it is certainly not impossible.

The last movement follows without a break, which is a not unusual event in Beethoven’s concertos of this period. What is unusual is that the E minor harmonies at the end of the Andante lead not to the expected G major at the beginning of the Rondo but, on a whim of the orchestra, to C major. The result is that the main theme is associated from the start with a harmonic anomaly which is recalled with every reappearance it makes. The piano accepts the situation and, in return, is set free in the intervening episodes to indulge its poetic imagination. It is such a fruitful situation that Beethoven is reluctant to correct it. Not even the impetus of the Presto coda, which follows a short cadenza, can sweep the rondo theme off its C major feet. In the end, however, it does compromise by lending its distinctive rhythm to the final chords of G major.

The character of the solo part of Piano Concerto No.5 in E flat major is so different from that of the others that it is questionable whether Beethoven intended to perform it himself. Certainly, he never played it in public: the by now serious impediment of his deafness would surely have made working with an orchestra impossible – which is presumably why he abandoned his sketches for a sixth piano concerto a few years later. Written in 1809 and dedicated (like the Fourth) to the Archduke Rudolph, Piano Concerto No.5 was an early recipient of its English nickname, the “Emperor,” which is as appropriate a one-word characterisation as could be attached to the grandest of all works of its kind before Brahms applied himself to the form.

While the “Emperor” title gives no hint of the delicacy of much of the solo part, it is a vivid reflection of that aspect of the work represented by its opening – the imperious full-orchestral chords and the heroic rising arpeggios on the piano. The main theme of the first movement, a sturdy march introduced by the strings in E flat major, is in the same vein although, as a solo clarinet briefly demonstrates, it has a lyrical side to it too. The second subject is a contrastingly eery, faintly mechanical idea lightly articulated by staccato violins in E flat minor but then reassuringly repeated in the major by the two horns. There are other melodic ideas but these two themes, together with a muscular little phrase from the first, supply the basic material for the second entry of the soloist. The piano is now less inclined to display its heroism than its harmonic enterprise, which is applied with particularly magical effect to the ever modulating second subject. It does, however, recover its dynamism in such a way as to encourage the orchestra to put its weight behind the main theme and eventually to produce the loud chord of E flat major which allows the soloist to relive the glory of the opening bars. The recapitulation which follows is interrupted not, Beethoven explicitly insists, by a cadenza but by a short solo passage leading into a last recall of the second subject, now in its original harmonies, and an exhilarating coda.

The comparatively short Adagio un poco mosso is not so much a full-scale slow movement as an introduction to the following Rondo. It lacks nothing in melodic beauty: the fervent opening theme confided by muted violins in B major and the piano’s serene reply in the same key are both among the composer’s most lyrical inspirations. Instead of completing the development of this material as he would have done in other circumstances, however, Beethoven changes course with a long series of trills rising high on the keyboard until they touch on B major, prompting the soloist to present a new version of the opening theme in its original harmonies. From there the melody passes to woodwind and pizzicato strings, with the piano embroidering a semiquaver figuration in octaves round it, and slowly disintegrates as the pitch gradually sinks – not to B this time but to B flat. This is all the encouragement the soloist needs to whisper a suggestion of an idea that, with appropriate changes of tempo and metre, could become the main theme of a rondo in E flat major.   

And that, without so much as a pause, is what actually happens. The piano imperiously introduces the definitive version of the new idea, a dance tune so exuberant in its rhythmic contradictions between left and right hands that it immediately engages the interest of the orchestra. It generates so much energy in fact that in spite of the intervention of two rather more reflective solo episodes it sustains the whole movement until, in an extraordinary passage for piano and timpani alone, it winds down to near motionlessness – only to spring back to life in an explosive coda.   

Gerald Larner © 2010