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Diedre Irons
Christchurch Symphony
Marc Taddei, Conductor
Piano Concerto No.1 in C, Op.15
1 Allegro con brio (18:50) (Listen)
2 Largo (12:01)
3 Rondo: Allegro (9:30)
Piano Concerto No.2 in B Flat, Op.19
4 Allegro con brio (14:59) (Listen)
5 Adagio (9:46)
6 Rondo: Allegro (6:21)
Total Time 71:29
MMT2050
Live Stereo Recording
© 2003 HRL Morrison Music Trust
P 2003 HRL Morrison Music Trust
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PIANO CONCERTO NO.1 IN C, OP.15
PIANO CONCERTO NO.2 IN B FLAT, OP.19
It was as a pianist and not as a composer that Beethoven first made an impression on the worldly and musically sophisticated Viennese. Arriving in the imperial capital less than a year after Mozart’s death Beethoven launched a determined campaign to establish himself as quickly as possible as the great man’s most obvious successor. Like Mozart before him Beethoven derived most of his income from playing and teaching during these critical years and viewed the composition of concertos for his own use as an important artistic and financial priority.
Beethoven’s first appearances in Vienna as a pianist were all private affairs held in the houses of the nobility. Interestingly enough, he delayed his public debut until 29 March 1795 when he appeared as the soloist in his own B flat Concerto at a concert at the Burgtheater. The Wiener Zeitung recorded that ‘the celebrated Herr Ludwig van Beethoven reaped the unanimous applause of the audience for his performance...’.
The successful premiere of the B flat concerto not only provided Beethoven with an opportunity to publicly display his formidable powers as a performer but also to demonstrate his growing confidence as a composer.
The rather complex chronology of the first two concertos tells us a great deal about Beethoven’s ambitions and attitudes during the mid-1790s. Although it has long been recognized that the work known as the ‘second’ concerto was completed before the first, it is not generally well known that this earlier concerto occupied the composer’s attention longer than any other of his works.
The first draft of the B flat concerto appears to have been underway as early as 1787, three years after the completion of a concerto in E flat for fortepiano and small orchestra (WoO4). It then underwent several radical revisions during the 1790s culminating in a major rewrite in 1798. A further three years elapsed before Beethoven reluctantly offered the work for publication (for half his usual fee) and in 1809, the year he completed the ‘Emperor’ concerto, the composer turned his attention to the score for the last time. In the course of twenty years or more the B flat concerto shed a slow movement, gained a new Finale and a very fine cadenza.
The true significance of Beethoven’s continual revision of the B flat concerto is not that he felt an underlying dissatisfaction with the work but rather realized that for all its inherent weaknesses it contained much that was good.
By way of comparison, the composition of the C major concerto was relatively straightforward. It was written in 1795, performed shortly thereafter and revised in 1800 prior to performance at Beethoven’s famous April Academy. If the B flat concerto was the work of a pianist attempting to follow in the footsteps of Mozart before he was technically equipped to do so, its successor clearly demonstrates the hallmarks of an experienced and highly accomplished composer.
In terms of overall structure and musical style, both of Beethoven’s first two concertos follow the Viotti-Mozart model very closely with their three-movement cycle (martial-–elegant–boisterous) while the power and intellectual complexity of the works reveals a characteristic seriousness of purpose.
While the two concertos are dissimilar in many respects, they share a number of common and important stylistic traits. Both first movements show considerable ingenuity and technical resource in the way in which thematic material is developed and shared between the soloist and the orchestra, the hallmark of Mozart’s mature concerto style. Both first movements introduce the soloist with a new theme rather than with a bald restatement of the opening thematic material. Characteristically, Beethoven never sacrifices the musical integrity of the work in order to increase the prominence and difficulty of the solo part. This is most evident in the central solos of both first movements, where the piano participates in the extension and development of existing material rather than creating new opportunities for flashy display.
The slow movements also have much in common. The contemplative Adagio in the B flat concerto is one of the earliest manifestations of Beethoven’s gift for writing very slow, concentrated movements of immense beauty while the most remarkable movement in the C major concerto is the grave and rather seductive Largo cast in the unusual key of A-flat major.
The unprecedented dynamism of nearly all Beethoven’s music is immediately apparent in the finale of the B flat concerto. The extant sketches show this element to have been important from the outset although Beethoven had considerable difficulty in deciding how best to notate the rhythm. The C major concerto finale also owes much of its power to the aggressive orchestration, which looks back to Haydn’s recent Symphony No.97 in C and forward to Beethoven’s own Symphony No.1.
Beethoven enjoyed great success as a performer with both of these concertos, delaying their publication until he felt they were beginning to lose their novelty. Although Beethoven ceased performing his first two concertos in the early years of the 19th century his decision to write cadenzas for the works in 1809 shows that he did not altogether lose interest in them.
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Recorded live at the Christchurch Town Hall, New Zealand, in association with AMI Insurance and Concert FM during 1 February, 15 & 17 March, 2003.
Production Wayne Laird
Recording Engineer Noel McGinnity
Executive Producer Ross Hendy
Booklet Notes Dr Allan Badley
Booklet Coordinator Janey MacKenzie
Design Mallabar Music
Photo Credits Robert Cross, Bob Goundrill, Raimund Lavender
The HRL Morrison Music Trust gratefully acknowledges the support of the following people and organisations in the making of this recording: AMI Insurance, Concert FM Professor John Ritchie, John Gow, Neil Roberts, Tim Jones & David Catty.
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