Beethoven - Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat ('Emperor') - Classic FM Beethoven - Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat ('Emperor') Written between 1809 and 1811, Beethoven's 'Emperor' piano concerto was to be his last. Every portrait of Beethoven seems to drive home the impression that he was a composer whose music was tempestuous, brooding and muscular. And while that was certainly the case, the masterful Emperor Concerto is proof of the tenderness and beauty that runs like a thread through this great man’s music. At the time of writing this concerto, Beethoven was very much straddling the divide between the Classical and Romantic periods. The work itself seems to be breaking out of conventional boundaries – almost as if a new kind of music is being born. The sheer length of the opening movement belies convention; the serene second movement flows directly – and unusually – into the finale; and the overt romance of the music looks ahead to a musical period that was at that time still in its infancy.

ALL-BEETHOVEN: FIFTH SYMPHONY & “EMPEROR” CONCERTO | New Jersey Symphony Orchestra New Jersey Symphony Orchestra ALL-BEETHOVEN: FIFTH SYMPHONY & “EMPEROR” CONCERTO 2014–15 Season Discover More What could be better than Beethoven’s Fifth? Two Fifths: his iconic symphony and the majestic “Emperor,” Piano Concerto No. 5. Soloist Marc-André Hamelin reigns supreme at the keyboard: “His technical facility is breathtaking … But his sensitivity is also superb,” says The Washington Post. Jacques Lacombe and the Orchestra give a magnificent conclusion to a wondrous season. JACQUES LACOMBE conductor Sun, Jun 7 at 3:00 PM New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark Groups of 10 or more save! Click here for more information. NJSO Accents Prelude Performance—Sat, June 6 and Sun, June 7 Come early and enjoy live music in the lobby, spotlighting vocalists and instrumentalists supported by the Nikhil Badlani Foundation on Saturday and members of the Lakeland Youth Symphony Orchestra on Sunday.

Sponsors The June 4 concert is sponsored by The Horizon Foundation for New Jersey. NJSO Accents in Newark are generously sponsored by the Prudential Foundation. PROGRAM NOTES BY LAURIE SHULMAN, ©2014 Introduction Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto was the inspiration for the NJSO’s season finale. “The orchestra has such a great relationship with this fantastic pianist, Marc-André Hamelin,” says Music Director Jacques Lacombe. “We started with the ‘Emperor’ and sought other works from the same period in Beethoven’s career. “Coriolan and the Fifth Symphony are both in C minor, which is the relative minor of E-flat major, the key of the ‘Emperor’,” he continues. “That link of tonality gives continuity to the program, yet we still have variety. Coriolan explores a darker side, while the Fifth Symphony progresses through many stages, culminating in the exuberance of Beethoven’s finale.” BEETHOVEN: Coriolan Overture, Op.

62 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Born: December 16, 1770, in Bonn, Germany Died: March 26, 1827, in Vienna, Austria Composed: 1807 World premiere: March 1807 at a concert given by Prince Lichnowsky. NJSO premiere: 1927–28 season; Philip James conducted. Duration: 9 minutes Beethoven’s source for Coriolan was a drama by Heinrich von Collin, based on the same story as Shakespeare’s play. The plot centers on Coriolanus, a general of the Roman republic who is banished from the city because of his proud disdain for the plebeians. He allies with the enemy Volscians and schemes to attack his fellow Romans. Coriolanus’ wife and mother enter the enemy camp in order to plead with him. In Collin’s drama, the tormented general commits suicide (a dénouement significantly different from Shakespeare, in which Coriolanus is killed by the Volscians).

Collin’s play was produced successfully in Vienna in 1802, but by 1807 its popularity had dwindled. Beethoven’s musical evocation of Collin’s Coriolan focuses on the hero’s moment of decision. The overture is a succinct sonata form that communicates the conflicts and human drama inherent in the play. Beethoven plunges us into the turmoil with agonized chords at the start. Coriolanus’ indecision is apparent in the unstable, flexible rhythm of the principal theme, whose lurching accents and phrasing are out of synchronization with the movement’s march tempo. At the conclusion, the hero is destroyed. No triumph emerges from this struggle. Beethoven’s message is dark, focusing on the hero’s frustration. His musical momentum is tied to Coriolanus’ emotional one-track mind. The result may be a tad depressing, but it is powerful in its finality. SIDEBAR: BEETHOVEN AND THE OVERTURE Beethoven’s overtures vary widely in content and quality. Some are occasional pieces with little dramatic import; others are middle-period masterpieces. The former category includes King Stephen and The Consecration of the House.

The latter group is dominated by the three Leonore Overtures and the Overture to Fidelio, plus Egmont and Coriolan. What they all share is a connection to staged drama. Beethoven only completed one opera, Fidelio, but we know that he considered several other operatic projects. His Creatures of Prometheus was one of the most popular ballets of the early 19th century. Beethoven also composed incidental music for several plays. Thus, the common denominator for his overtures is theatre. Only one of Beethoven’s overtures, Namensfeier, was conceived independent of the stage. Instrumentation: woodwinds, horns, and trumpets in pairs, timpani and strings. BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major (“Emperor”), Op. 73 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Composed: 1809 World premiere: November 28, 1811, in Leipzig. Friedrich Schneider was the pianist; Johann Philipp Schulz conducted the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. NJSO premiere: 1927–28 season with soloist Harold Bauer; Philip James conducted.

Duration: 38 minutes Beethoven tested his boundaries and elasticity of form in this, his last concerto. One revolutionary move was placing the solo cadenza at the beginning of the first movement, rather than its traditional placement near the end. After the piano’s majestic opening flourishes, nearly 100 measures of music unfold before we hear the soloist again. In fact, this opening Allegro is the longest movement he ever composed. When the pianist re-enters, it is with another grand gesture: an ascending chromatic scale and clarion trill before a simple, elegant statement of the imperial theme. The piano weaves around the principal melodic ideas, etching elaborate figures without obscuring the noble design of each theme. The middle movement is comparatively brief, perhaps because its rich tonality of B major is so potent. Beethoven’s Adagio un poco mosso emphasizes dialogue between soloist and orchestra. He develops his material almost like variations, with an improvisatory character. Hector Berlioz was a great admirer of this movement, calling it “the very image of grace” and singling out Beethoven’s ethereal orchestration.

With affirmation forthcoming from the noble horns, the exultant finale launches its irrepressible joy ride for one of the most delightful and positive conclusions in all Beethoven. As in the first movement, the piano choreographs dazzling figures around the principal themes, yet maintains the clarity of those themes. Our perception of royal splendor remains unimpaired. The “Emperor” ends with every ounce of the magnificent style with which it opened: virile, spacious and ever confident. SIDEBAR: BEETHOVEN’S ‘EMPEROR’: MAJESTY AND MUSIC The “Emperor” Concerto does not address any particular monarch, although it bears a dedication to the composer’s student and patron Archduke Rudolph of Austria. The nickname “Emperor” attached itself somewhat later but incurred skepticism almost immediately thereafter. It was decried as inauthentic by none other than Sir George Grove (of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians fame) in the 1870s. The nickname stuck because the concerto seems imperial: unfolding in large, commanding gestures that suggest power, poise and confidence.

Hallmarks of Beethoven’s heroic style—the key of E-flat major, march rhythm, and quasi-military themes—strengthen the association, which seems so fitting to this marvelous concerto. Instrumentation: woodwinds, horns and trumpets in pairs, timpani, strings and solo piano. BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN World premiere: December 22, 1808, in Vienna. NJSO premiere: 1929–30 season; Rene Pollain conducted. Duration: 36 minutes In his landmark study, The Classical Style, Charles Rosen observes that Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, like Mozart’s D minor Piano Concerto, is almost as much myth as work of art. “When listening to it,” he writes, “it is difficult at times to say whether we are hearing the work or its reputation.” That reputation developed almost immediately. As early as 1810, the eminent critic E.T.A. Hoffmann reviewed the Fifth Symphony in Vienna, citing it as the embodiment of musical romanticism. Tradition has assigned to the Fifth Symphony the musical metaphor of artist as hero.

Pitted against an unsympathetic society, the hero emerges triumphant after a victory over internal strife. Hoffmann was one of the earliest critics to explore the remarkable programmatic potential of a hero in Beethoven’s score, but the composer himself planted the seeds for the ensuing harvest of rhetoric. Beethoven biographer Anton Schindler reported that Beethoven “pointed to the beginning of the first movement and expressed in these words the fundamental idea of his work: ‘Thus Fate knocks at the door!’” Strengthening that idea is the tonality of C minor, which has been called both the “key of fate” and the “heroic key” in Beethoven’s music. Robert Schumann detected French influence in the music of the Fifth Symphony, particularly that of Etienne-Nicolas Méhul (1763–1817). French music at the turn of the 19th century, especially opera, bore the imprint of the French Revolution. France was in a state of political and social upheaval for Beethoven’s entire creative life, and the presence of a growing military culture had an impact on all the arts.

Obviously, this work has spoken to listeners in a variety of ways since its premiere and, as Charles Rosen points out, has transcended its own reputation into the realm of legend. From a musical standpoint, the overriding characteristic that unifies the Fifth Symphony is military flavor. March rhythms figure prominently, sometimes even when the music is in triple time, as in the C-major sections of the slow movement. Beethoven’s emphasis on the brass section underscores the martial quality of the symphony. So too does his expansion of the orchestra to include piccolo (redolent of military band flavor), contrabassoon and trombones for the finale. His letter to his patron Count Franz von Oppersdorff in March 1808 shows that he wanted the bigger sound: “The last movement of the symphony has three trombones and flautino [piccolo]—and not three timpani, but will make more noise than six timpani, and better noise than that.” Only the beginning of the scherzo, with its spooky, menacing lower strings outlining the opening arpeggios, eludes the military overtones.

Beethoven’s allusion to “better noise” makes one wonder whether there is an undertone of glee in his close. He takes a whopping 54 measures to hammer home the final C-major cadence, just to make certain we get his message. More than two centuries later, the rhetoric retains its power undiminished. Instrumentation: piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings. SIDEBAR: TWELVE THINGS YOU PROBABLY DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT BEETHOVEN Many music lovers consider Beethoven to be the greatest musical genius who ever lived. The literature about him is enormous, since scholars continue to examine every aspect of his life and works. The general public has been no less curious, flocking to films such as Bernard Rose’s Immortal Beloved (1994). Consequently, we know more about Beethoven than other composers—or we think we do. Even seasoned concertgoers, however, may be surprised at some unusual information about his background, life and colorful personality.

Consider the following: Beethoven’s grandfather, also named Ludwig [Louis] van Beethoven (1712–73) was the first of three generations of Beethoven musicians. Born in Antwerp, he later moved to Bonn to take the position of Hofkapellmeister in the court of Elector Maximilian Friedrich of Cologne. Under the tutelage of his most important instructor, Christian Gottlob Neefe, Beethoven learned Bach’s complete Well Tempered Clavier, 48 preludes and fugues that were not well known in the 1780s. He was playing them by memory in his early teens. Beethoven’s first professional position was as court organist to Elector Max Franz in 1784. Five years later, he was playing viola in the Elector’s court orchestra; he was also a capable violinist. Napoleon’s youngest brother Jerome Bonaparte, who was King of Westphalia at the height of Napoleon’s empire, offered Beethoven the position of Kapellmeister in 1808.

(The composer declined.) After a visit to Vienna in 1817, English piano maker Thomas Broadwood sent Beethoven a six-octave grand piano. According to Broadwood’s biographer David Wainwright, “The case was Spanish mahogany, inlaid with marquetry and ormolu, the brass carrying-handles formed as laurel wreaths.” Beethoven’s name was inscribed along with a Latin translation noting the gift. Broadwood enlisted five other musicians to autograph the instrument, including the pianists Frederic Kalkbrenner and Johann Baptist Cramer. Franz Liszt acquired the instrument about 1846. Eventually, he presented it to the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest. Twelve museums in five European countries are devoted to Beethoven. Four of them are in Vienna, where he lived for most of his life, moving frequently within the city. Beethoven’s favorite composers were Mozart, Haydn, Bach and Handel (he preferred Handel to Bach). Among older composers, he also revered Palestrina. Although he was critical of most contemporaries, he admired the operas of Gaspare Spontini and Luigi Cherubini.

The concept of heroism, and specifically the death of a hero, is a recurrent theme in such great works as the “Eroica” Symphony, the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives and the incidental music to Goethe’s Egmont. Heroism surfaced much earlier in Beethoven’s music. His first known composition was a funeral cantata from 1781 that has not survived. In 1790, the city of Bonn commissioned him to write a Cantata on the Death of the Emperor Joseph II. We know it as WoO 87 (read on!). Most major composers have a thematic catalogue compiled by scholars. Bach has the Schmieder catalogue, abbreviated S. (or BWV for Bach Werke Verzeichnis); Mozart has the Köchel catalogue (source of the K. number), and Schubert the Deutsch catalogue (abbreviated D.). Beethoven has multiple catalogues. Four 19th-century efforts were superseded by Georg Kinsky and Hans Halm’s Das Werk Beethovens: Thematisch-Bibliographisches Verzeichnis in 1955, which is the standard.

Kinsky and Halm included a special category, WoO, which stands for Werk ohne Opuszahl, or “work without opus number.” Willy Hess published another catalogue in 1957 that catalogues Beethoven’s unfinished works and sketches. Dozens of Beethoven’s conversation books survive from 1818 until 1827. They reflect thoughts communicated to the deaf composer by his friends, family and associates, but not his own comments, since he usually responded verbally. Consequently, these books, while a valuable biographical source, require the reader to reconstruct Beethoven’s half of the conversation. They are filled with details about everyday life, from gossip to family matters, from medical maladies to weather. Comparatively few of the entries pertain to Beethoven’s music. The familiar images of Beethoven show a craggy-faced man with wild, longish grey hair. All surviving portraits depict him as clean-shaven. During his last decade, however, he frequently allowed his beard to grow long, adding to his bizarre appearance. In these later years, most Viennese assumed that the famous composer, noted for his eccentricity, was more than a bit insane.

In addition to deafness, Beethoven suffered from lifelong bouts of intestinal disorders beginning in his teens. Modern physicians who have analyzed reports of his stomach complaints and contemporary diagnoses believe that he may have suffered from Crohn’s Disease, a chronic, recurrent inflammatory enteritis. His final illness was cirrhosis of the liver. At the time, his death was attributed to abdominal dropsy. (The modern term is “ascites,” an accumulation of fluid in the peritoneal cavity of the abdomen.) A recent theory put forward several years ago asserts that he may have been inadvertently poisoned by lead by his final physician, exacerbating his liver condition. – L.S. ©2014 Piano Concerto No. 5, "Emperor" | LA Phil Piano Concerto No. 5, "Emperor" Composed: 1809 Length: c.

40 minutes Orchestration: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings, and solo piano First Los Angeles Philharmonic performance: December 15, 1922, Walter Henry Rothwell conducting, with pianist Elly Ney The composer's last piano concerto dates from the beginning of May 1809, when, with Napoleon's army besieging Vienna, the Austrian Imperial family and all of the court, including Beethoven’s pupil, friend, and benefactor, Archduke Rudolph, fled the city. On May 11 the French artillery, which commanded the heights of the surrounding countryside and had penetrated outlying portions of the city proper, was activated. Beethoven’s house stood perilously close to the line of fire. Those who could not – or, like Beethoven, would not – leave sought shelter underground. Beethoven found a temporary haven in the cellar of his brother's house. Imagine the composer crouching there, with heaven knows how many other frightened souls, trying to shield his already irreparably damaged ears from the din of volley after volley.

Once the bombardment had ceased and the Austrian forces had surrendered, the occupiers imposed a "residence tax" on the Viennese. The composer, on whom a sufficiently heavy financial burden had been placed by the departure of those who would guarantee his income, described "a city filled with nothing but drums, cannon, marching men, and misery of all sorts." After the summer Beethoven was able to get away from the city and return to composing, producing back-to-back masterpieces in the "heroic" key of E-flat, the present Piano Concerto and the "Harp" Quartet, Op. 74. The grim experiences of the preceding months had not diminished his creative powers. With many of his circle back in Vienna at the beginning of 1810, by which time a general armistice had been signed, life was returning to a semblance of normalcy, the French uniforms and the sound of the French language in the streets notwithstanding. There was, however, no opportunity to present the new concerto. That had to wait until the following year, and then not in Vienna but in Leipzig, with one Friedrich Schneider as soloist.

Beethoven, who had written his four previous piano concertos for his own performance, was by now too deaf to perform with orchestra. For the occasion of the Vienna premiere in February 1812 the soloist was Beethoven's prize pupil, Carl Czerny. Interestingly, the concerto itself failed to make much of an impression, largely, it would seem, because of the nature of the audience, the Society of Noble Ladies of Charity, more receptive to the historic tableaux vivants that shared the bill with Beethoven. The one press review that has survived, from the periodical Thalia, took note of that fact: "Beethoven, full of confidence in himself, never writes for the multitude. He demands understanding and feeling, and because of the intenational difficulties, he can receive these only at the hands of the connoisseurs, who are not to be found at such functions." Nonetheless it was at that same concert that one connoisseur, a French army officer, supposedly called this "an emperor among concertos" (aloud, in the auditorium?). Although this is often cited as a source of the nickname, verification is lacking.

It is more likely that "Emperor" was the brainchild of an early publisher. Whatever its origin, the sobriquet seems apt for music of such imperious grandeur. Here, Beethoven is no longer writing up to his own lofty standards as a performer, but for the supervirtuoso of the following generation – personified by Czerny. Yet while the projection of power is among the composer's aims, overt display is not, with nothing resembling a solo cadenza in sight. With the "Emperor" Beethoven created a truly symphonic concerto. The first movement opens with a grandiose E-flat chord for the full orchestra, interrupted by a series of equally commanding arpeggios for the solo, suggesting an early cadenza. But instead Beethoven alternates mighty pronouncements for the orchestra and the piano.

The introduction ended, the piano offers a broad, swaggering theme of which (and of the ensuing, more subdued, second theme) Donald Francis Tovey, in his famous analysis of the Concerto, wrote: "The orchestra is not only symphonic, but is enabled by the very necessity of accompanying the solo lightly to produce ethereal orchestral effects that are in quite a different category from anything in the symphonies. On the other hand, the solo part develops the technique of its instrument with a freedom and brilliance for which Beethoven has no leisure in sonatas and chamber music." The second movement is one of the composer's sublime inspirations. The muted strings play a theme of incomparable beauty and sad tenderness, the piano responding in hushed, descending triplets, creating a subtle tension until the theme is fully exposed. The nocturne-like character of the movement is furthered by a delicate balance of soft woodwinds, strings, and the solo, as the music mysteriously fades away. Then, over a sustained horn note, the piano introduces, softly and still andante, the theme of the rondo finale. Suddenly, dramatically, the piano lunges into the final theme, now a grandly exuberant allegro.

— Herbert Glass Top 10 Greatest Piano Concerti - Listverse Top 10 Greatest Piano Concerti Flamehorse April 26, 2012 A piano concerto is a composition in which a solo piano (or harpsichord) is accompanied by a large ensemble of other instruments (usually a full orchestra but not always). This list looks at 10 of the greatest (with an additional bonus entry from JFrater). The criteria for inclusion and ranking of entries are musical artistry, technical artistry, pianistic power, balance between piano and orchestra, and historical influence. 10 No. 2, C minor, Op. 18 Sergei Rachmaninoff Possibly Rachmaninoff’s most famous piece, along with his Prelude in C# minor (which he actually got tired of performing in public). Rachmaninoff is one of the few classical composers in history who was a genuine triple threat: world-class composer, performer, and conductor. Thus, when it came to composing for his own instrument, he didn’t pull any punches.

He knew what a classically-trained pianist should be able to do, and with gigantic hands that could stretch a 13th on the keyboard (the average man’s hand can barely manage a 10th), he incorporated a lot of equally gigantic chords in his music. This concerto begins with a driving, very atmospheric, almost dirge-like melody. As is typical of his works, the last movement winds up with a pulse-pounding moment of elation. These 10-fingered chords are one of the primary calling cards of his music, one of the reasons you can recognize his music after only a few measures. His 2nd concerto was his first outstanding work in a long time, after a series of mediocre efforts, and this mediocrity was driving him to depression because he knew he was much better than the critics would have him believe. They lambasted his 1st concerto. His 1st symphony was notably derided by Cesar Cui, of the Russian “Big Five,” who claimed it could only be enjoyed by terrible musicians who died and went to Hell where they would have to listen to it forever.

Rachmaninoff was sensitive to criticism, and such comments, echoed by Leo Tolstoy (who also considered Beethoven horrible), coupled with the sudden suicide of Rachmaninoff’s mentor and friend, Tchaikovsky, drove him into 3 years of clinical depression and writer’s block. He finally overcame it with the help of Nicolai Dahl, who hypnotized him and repeated over and over, “You are a great composer. You will compose great music.” 9 Harpsichord Concerto No. 1, BWV 1052 J. S. Bach It is not a bit of a cheat to include this one, since although Bach wrote it for the harpsichord (because the piano had only recently been invented and was not yet a very good instrument), it is today played at least as frequently on piano. That is one of the most amazing aspects of Bach’s music, and a brilliancy no other composer can claim: his music can be played just as effectively on any instrument combination; no musicality is lost; his is, thus, the purest music anyone has ever written, and if the percussive quality of the piano were not taken into account, this one would top the list.

Bach originally scored it for solo violin, and later re-scored it for keyboard. As is typical of his music, it is extremely complex, with polyphonic harmony of the highest order, and severe technical demands, which Bach could dash off with polished artistry. It also deserves a spot on the list because it is the first truly solo concerto, at least in the spirit of the soloist being able to show off. 8 Concerto in A minor, Op. 16 Edvard Grieg This one has the distinction of being first played by Franz Liszt himself. Not in public, but when Grieg brought it to him for his approval. Liszt and he met in 1870 in Rome, and Liszt asked him to play it, but Grieg said that he had not yet practiced it, so Liszt sightread the entire thing, even playing the orchestral parts. Liszt immediately complimented him highly, especially for the g-sharp in the final scale run at the end of the 1st movement. It is one of the most popular concerti today, being fairly easy to perform compared to the others on this list, and in the relative minor of C Major.

This key enables the music to make excellent use of the lowest note on the piano. The 2nd movement is one of the most beautiful ever written, and a piece of which Grieg was particularly proud. He intended it to remind the listener of a verdant waterfall. 7 No. 4, G Major, Op. 58 Ludwig van Beethoven Even today, there are quite a few critics and musicologists, as well as performers, who consider this Beethoven’s finest concerto. This lister is not so convinced, but what Beethoven does brilliantly in this one is pristine balance of melody, development, technique, musicality, and balance between soloist and orchestra. Beethoven is known for short motif-like themes, which he could develop into the highest form of music better than just about anyone. He made much out of little. But now and then, as with his his “Ode to Joy,” he could dream up a melody just as lyrical as those of Mozart. The same is true of this concerto, and yet proper development of such lyrical melodies is extremely difficult for composers to muster, as the history of music bears out. Mozart was of the opinion that if you can compose a good melody, the hard part is over.

Whenever excellent melody and excellent development meet, it’s a masterpiece, and that is precisely why this concerto is one. The most notable moment in it is in the cadenza at the end of the 2nd movement. Beethoven wrote this one himself, but left the cadenza of the 1st movement to be improvised by the performer. He marked the 2nd movement’s cadenza “una corda.” On today’s pianos, we call this the soft pedal, which shifts the hammers from all three strings of each note to just one of each. But in Beethoven’s day, this pedal actually shifted the hammers to one or two of each note’s three strings, at the composer’s discretion, and he indicated the cadenza to make full use of this ability, “due e poi the corde (two and then three strings)” during the opening trill, and “due poi una corda (two then one string)” during the end. Today, it can only be done on a period piano of Beethoven’s time. 6 No. 1, B-flat minor, Op.

23 Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky Today, this may possibly be the most famous concerto on this list, ever since Liberace practically used it as his theme song for years, even playing the opening overture on giant piano keys around the side of his swimming pool. Tchaikovsky could play the piano, but was not well-practiced enough to perform this piece. For a supreme composer, this is no crutch. Like all the greats, Tchaikovsky wrote at a writing desk, not seated at a piano. This concerto was very daring for its day, especially since Tchaikovsky dedicated it to his friend and magnificent piano legend Nikolai Rubinstein, the brother of an even greater pianist, Anton. Nikolai was an absolute master of Mozart’s piano music, and his playing style could not have been more perfectly suited to such cheerful, technically refined works. Anton was the one who broke strings when he practiced. This concerto would have been perfect, therefore, for Anton to premiere, but Tchaikovsky was closer to Nikolai and Nikolai almost always premiered his new works.

Unfortunately, when he read the score, he threw it down in disgust and proceeded to criticize Tchaikovsky harshly for what he termed “a concerto against the piano.” It was far too bombastic for his taste. Tchaikovsky was, of course, offended by this, but years later Nikolai approached him and asked for forgiveness, explaining that it had taken him that long to warm up to it. After that, he performed it all the time. It has the single most famous passage of octaves in the piano repertoire, in the 1st movement. It takes a true musician to play them correctly but not to show off by rushing through them. There is a second octave passage in the 3rd movement. The most famous part of the entire piece, though, is the opening, an ecstatic revelry of ultra-romantic music from one of the most romantic of the Romantic era. And this overture doesn’t even have the 1st melody in it. It leads to the 1st melody.

The 1st movement also ends extravagantly with one of the very few instances of a 1-4-1 cadence, when 1 chords (tonic) and 5 chords (dominant) are almost all you ever hear at the end of a piece of music. The 4 chord is called the subdominant. 5 No. 21, C Major, K. 467 W. A. Mozart In terms of musicality, this one would rank second on this list behind #9, but we are equally examining all aspects of the piano concerto, and in terms of pianistic power, this concerto is quite a sweetheart. Mozart is not known for bombastic music, though he certainly wrote some. The phrase often thrown around (if you’ll forgive the God reference) is, “Bach gave us God’s Word. Mozart gave us God’s laughter. Beethoven gave us God’s fire.” This concerto is typical of that carefree, happy quality for which Mozart is legendary. Nevertheless, the technicality and musicality of this one require a pianist with a finished technique, especially in presto legato fingering.

The 2nd movement is used to great effect in the film “Elvira Madigan,” and now the concerto is sometimes nicknamed that. Beethoven, Haydn, and Hummel were in attendance for one or more of Mozart’s own performances of this piece, and all agreed that his technique, especially in the right hand, was faultless, with the running passages in the 3rd movement as unbroken as a river. 4 No. 3, D minor, Op. 30 Rachmaninoff By far the most technically difficult concerto ever written for any instrument, requiring extreme pianistic power. Vladimir Horowitz, one of its finest recorded performers, called it “elephantine.” Just as in his 2nd Concerto, the music in this one reflects his hands, with many of the chords great big and fat. His original cadenza for the 1st movement is filled with these massive chords and the pianist must bang the piano to death to deliver it with the proper leonine character. One of the best recordings of it is that of Lazar Berman, who did not shy away from its demands.

The 1st movement builds to multiple climaxes, then dies away quietly to a lush, windy 2nd movement. Then, per his reputation, Rachmaninoff revs it up for a storming finish at the of the 3rd movement. 3 Concerto in A minor, Op. 54 Robert Schumann One of the most finely polished of this list’s entries, and the quintessential work of the Romantic piano concerto repertoire. The entire work is based on a 4-note theme. It descends in minor as the main theme of the 1st movement. In the 2nd, it ascends in major. Schumann further varies it in the third. It is, thus, something of a cyclic work, intending to explore fully all the possibilities of a melody. The most monumental cyclic work ever composed is the Art of the Fugue, by Bach, who heavily influenced Schumann. His wife, Clara, the greatest female pianist in history, premiered this one on 1 January 1846. Grieg may have been influenced directly by it in composing his own piece, #8. Both are in the same opening key, and both begin with an orchestral chord, followed by the descending soloist.

This one ranks at #3 because of its pure Romantic character, the archetype of all the 1800s, and extreme musical complexity. Combine the two and you require, as Artur Rubinstein once said, “No one younger than 40,” if you want it played effectively. 2 No. 2, B-flat Major, Op. 83 Johannes Brahms Unfortunately, Brahms himself was never recorded playing this one, but his mighty performances always brought the house down. He was short, but he was brawny and could easily impart his ample body weight into the strong passages. This concerto is today considered possibly as difficult as Rachmaninoff’s 3rd, not because of technique so much as because a diminutive pianist is at a severe disadvantage in overcoming the full orchestra. It’s a thunderous piece all the way, in 4 movements, not 3.

The 1st movement has a passage in it that sounds a lot like the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which is a total coincidence, and then it ends with a double trill flourish, in which the pianist adds another finger, then another, louder and louder as the orchestra swells, and the piano must be heard over it the whole time. 1 No. 5, E-flat Major, Op. 73 Beethoven There are two stories of how it got its nickname, “Emperor.” One is that during its Vienna premiere, a French army officer remarked in the audience, “C’est l’empereur de concerti!” or “This is the emperor of concerti!” The other story, and likely the correct one, is that Beethoven’s London publicist, Johann Cramer, gave it the name. It was premiered first on 28 November 1811 at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig with Friedrich Schneider at the keyboard. By this point, Beethoven was too deaf to perform it himself, but he certainly wanted to. He tended to play too fast from excitement.

A few months later, 12-year-old Carl Czerny, pupil of Beethoven and later teacher of Franz Liszt, premiered it in Vienna. Czerny is reported to have played magnificently, and this is supported by the fact that Beethoven would not have allowed him to butcher it. To play such a supremely difficult work of art at 12 years old is, today, almost unheard of. This was one of the first concerti, along with Beethoven’s 4th, to break with the Classical tradition of a long orchestral introduction preceding the soloist. Instead, it begins with the orchestra declaring the key and the piano fearlessly joining in with cadenza scale runs and trills. The 3rd movement is, of course, just as fantastic as the 1st, but the 2nd is one of the most beautiful, poetic pieces of music ever written, unadulterated romance, the piano and orchestra as lovers, and by far the finest slow movement of all concerti. Rudolf Serkin has, under Leonard Bernstein’s conducting, a claim to the finest recording of it.

+ Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra Alfred Schnittke As a lover of contemporary and modern classical music I felt it only fitting that I add to Flamehorse’s list of concerti by including a piano concerto by my favorite composer, Alfred Schnittke. Schnittke composed in a very eclectic manner – using quotes from other great composers from the past but always adding his own flair. This concerto demonstrates that the art of concerto composing is far from dead. It is an incredibly moving and emotional piece of music. If you like this you will love everything by Schnittke. I definitely recommend you listen to more of his music. More Great Lists Listening to Beethoven's 'Emperor' Piano Concerto - Classic FM Listening to Beethoven's 'Emperor' Piano Concerto Related Links Join Hear Here! Beethoven wrote five piano concertos in all, plus the Choral Fantasia, a hybrid work for piano, orchestra and chorus. He was a pianist himself, although as his deafness became worse his abilities in that department diminished, so it was natural that he should want to take the keyboard concerto that Mozart had developed further along its evolutionary - or revolutionary - line.

The Fourth Piano Concerto, whose public premiere in 1808 was the last occasion on which Beethoven played the piano in public, had certainly made a few ears prick up in surprise, not least because it opens with the piano playing alone and quietly. No composer had dared to do something like that before. The overriding flavour of the Fifth Piano Concerto, composed between 1809 and 1811 (between the Sixth and Seventh Symphonies) and dedicated to the Archduke Rudolf, who besides being a patron and a pupil of Beethoven was also a friend, is every bit as heroic as its nickname, possibly given to it by another friend, the London-resident pianist and publisher Johann Baptist Cramer, suggests. And the solo part, played on its premiere in Leipzig in 1811 by a young organist called Friedrich Schneider, is as technically challenging as anything Beethoven ever wrote. Again the opening is unprecedented: three full orchestral chords, followed by a long cadenza-like passage for solo piano that sounds improvisatory but isn't. If Beethoven wasn't going to be able to play the solo role he wasn't going to leave anything to chance.

Listen to the opening of Beethoven's 'Emperor' Concerto It's quite a complex first movement - there's lots of variation and development and an amount of gritty conflict between orchestra and piano - but the main body of the movement has a strong underlying march-like pulse which helps the music to hang together. Listen to the march-like pulse in the first movement of Beethoven's 'Emperor' Concerto The second movement, which unusually for a concerto in E flat major is in the remote key of B minor, is a complete contrast, reflective and poetic, and it leads magically - listen for the solo bassoon dropping down a semitone - straight into the finale. Beethoven's 'Emperor' concerto: a work ahead of its time | Beethoven - Classic FM Classic FM Beethoven's 'Emperor' concerto: a work ahead of its time By Jane Jones Beethoven 's last piano concerto is also one of the most accomplished of them all. The title 'Emperor' seems to have stuck from the earliest performances of Beethoven ’s music, although I doubt it’s a name he’d have given to a concerto which has been described as the embodiment of Romantic conflict.

A very real conflict certainly had an impact on Beethoven’s writing in 1809, but given the way we know Beethoven felt about the Emperor Napoleon, it’s hardly a title he would have chosen. There are a number of stories about how this, his fifth piano concerto, got it’s name - and I think the most plausible comes from the circumstances of its Viennese premiere. The concert in February 1812 was organised by the impressively named ‘Society of Noble Ladies for Charity for Fostering the Good and Useful’ as part of the festivities ordered by the city’s French conquerors. Beethoven’s music must have stood out like a sore thumb amongst the popular songs and performances which made up this concert programme, but given the circumstances, ‘Emperor’ seemed a fitting title for the new concerto . It’s hardly surprising that in the midst of that variety show, Beethoven’s concerto did not do well. In contrast to its reception in Vienna, the work’s earlier premiere in Leipzig had been well received with one critic describing it as ‘without doubt one of the most original, imaginative, most effective but also one of the most difficult of all concertos’.

It was certainly born out of a difficult time not just for Beethoven but for all Austria, when the French invaded in 1809. Beethoven complained that the course of events ‘has affected me body and soul…with nothing by drums, cannons, men, misery of all sorts’. The composer even had to evacuate to his brother’s home and take refuge in the basement from explosions and cannon attacks. Yet by the end of 1809, the work was complete even if circumstances meant there was no premiere for another couple of years. As always, there is much that is ahead of its time in this last and largest of Beethoven’s piano concertos. Its virtuosic style and wide dynamic range is perfectly suited to the kind of concert piano which Beethoven can only have dreamed of, and which wasn’t developed until the mid 1820s. He also gave precise instructions to the soloist against the prevailing fashion where a virtuoso would launch into a cadenza. Instead he wrote out all the solo passages, and on the piano part of his score wrote ‘Do not play a cadenza, but begin immediately what follows’.

What follows is one of the most accomplished of all piano concertos, with a striking opening movement and a glorious rondo finale, but it’s the beauty and serenity of the hymn-like adagio which makes this Beethoven’s best. Music History 102 Born: Salzburg, January 27, 1756 Died: Vienna, December 5, 1791 At the age of four he could learn a piece of music in half an hour. At five he was playing the clavier incredibly well. At six he began composing, writing his first symphonies at the age of eight. He was constantly traveling all over Europe with his father, Leopold Mozart (1719-1787), a violinist, minor composer and Vice-Kapellmeister at the court of the Archbishop of Salzburg. The musical feats and tricks of young Wolfgang were exhibited to the courts (beginning in Munich in 1762), to musical academicians, and to the public. Between the ages of seven and fifteen, the young Mozart spent half of his time on tour.

During these tours, Mozart heard, absorbed, and learned various European musical idioms, eventually crystallizing his own mature style. Fully expecting to find an ideal post outside his sleepy home town of Salzburg and the detested archiepiscopal court, in 1777 Wolfgang went on a tour with his mother to Munich, Mannheim, and Paris. It was in Paris that his mother died suddenly in July, 1778. With no prospects of a job, Mozart dejectedly returned to Salzburg in 1779 and became court organist to the Archbishop. Mozart finally achieved an unceremonious dismissal from the archiepiscopal court in 1781, and thereafter became one of the first musicians in history to embark upon a free-lance career, without benefit of church, court, or a rich patron. Mozart moved to Vienna where he lived for a time with the Webers, a family he had met in 1777. He eventually married Constanze Weber in August of1782, against the wishes and strict orders of his father. Then for a time, things began to look bright for the young composer.

Beginning in 1782 with the Singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio), Mozart began turning out one masterpiece after another in every form and genre. Mozart is probably the only composer in history to have written undisputed masterworks in virtually every musical genre of his age. His serenades, divertimenti and dances, written on request for the entertainment and outdoor parties of the nobility, have become synonomous with the Classical "age of elegance," and are perhaps best exemplified by the well-known Serenade in G major, which the composer called Eine kleine Nachtmusik (A little night music). In Vienna, Mozart became a regular at the court of Emperor Joseph II (1741-1790), where he wrote much of his greatest music. A sampling of Mozart's mature works comprise a virtual honor roll of musical masterpieces: the last ten string quartets, the string quintets, and the Quintet for clarinet and strings; the Mass in C minor and the unfinished Requiem; the Serenade for thirteen wind instruments, the Clarinet concerto, the late piano concertos, and the last six symphonies.

Mozart's more than twenty piano concertos remain models of the classic concerto form, developed by him over time into works of symphonic breadth and scope. The concertos often begin with an elaborate sonata form first movement, followed by a tender and melodious second movement, and usually conclude with a brisk, engaging rondo, as in the Piano Concerto no. 22 in E-flat. In his last three symphonies, the second of which is the great Symphony no. 40 in G minor, Mozart infused this form with a passion and expressiveness unheard of in symphonic writing until the advent of Beethoven . Of Mozart's operas, Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), composed for the Viennese court in 1786, is the earliest opera still found in the repertoire of virtually all of today's opera houses. Through his dramatic and musical genius, Mozart transformed such operatic comedies and characters into living, breathing dramas peopled with real human beings.

He found a kindred spirit in this regard at the Viennese court in the person of Lorenzo da Ponte (1749-1838), who supplied Mozart with the librettos of his three Italian operatic masterpieces. Figaro was followed in 1787 by Don Giovanni (Don Juan), written for Prague, where Figaro had been an overwhelming success. The intensity of Mozart's music in the penultimate scene of Don Giovanni, in which the title character is dragged down to hell, unrepentant, at the hands of an avenging spirit, might even be said to have helped usher in the Romantic era . Having scaled the heights of Italian opera buffa, Mozart turned again to the German Singspiel in the final year of his life. Again he produced yet another masterpiece, this time with the unconventional combination of low comedy and high ideals.

Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) tells of a young prince who successfully endures the trials put to him by a fraternal priesthood in a search for truth and love, while the everyman character of Papageno in his song Der Vogelfänger bin ich, ja yearns for the earthly pleasures of wine, food, and female companionship. During his years in Vienna, Mozart also made the acquaintance of composer Franz Joseph Haydn . The two became close friends and the older composer's music had a profound influence on Mozart. Between 1782 and 1785, Mozart composed a series of six string quartets which he dedicated to Haydn.

Upon playing through some of them together, Haydn said to Mozart's father, who was present, "Before God and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer I know, either personally or by name." Yet through his mismanagement of money (and as a successful composer of operas and a reknowned piano virtuoso, he made a great deal), and the documented incidences of his tactless, impulsive, and at times childish behavior in an era of powdered wigs and courtly manners, Mozart seemed to find it difficult to make a successful living. By 1790 he was writing letters to friends, describing himself and his family (he and Constanze had six children, only two of which survived) in desperate circumstances and begging for money. He was also by this time seriously ill, and had been intermittently for some time, with what was most likely disease of the kidneys. With the success of The Magic Flute and a newly granted yearly stipend, Mozart was just beginning to become financially stable when his illness brought an end to his life and career at the age of thirty-six.

He was buried, like most Viennese in those days by the decree of Emperor Joseph, in a common grave, the exact location of which remains unknown. The influence of Mozart on the composers that followed cannot be emphasized too strongly. He was idolized by such late nineteenth century composers as Richard Wagner and Peter Tchaikovsky ; and his music came to influence the neo-classical compositions of Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev in the twentieth century. Music History 102: a Guide to Western Composers and their music Designed, compiled and created by Robert Sherrane Beethoven Emperor Concerto | Toronto Symphony Orchestra Beethoven Emperor Concerto Beethoven Emperor Concerto The legendary American pianist Garrick Ohlsson focuses all his insight and strength on Beethoven's broadest, most regal concerto. Conductor Jiri Belohlavek brings matchless authority to a fascinating symphony by his fellow Czech, Martinu, and TSO Principal Clarinet Joaquin Valdepeñas shines in Debussy's fanciful rhapsody. Performance Schedule Concert running time is approximately two hours. This project is funded in part by the Government of Canada.

Ce projet est financé en partie par le gouvernement du Canada. Concert Dates Close Bohuslav Martinů was born in Poli?ka, Czech Republic on December 8, 1890 and died in Liestal, Switzerland on August 28, 1959. Martinů wrote his Sixth Symphony in 1953. It runs approximately 25 minutes in performance. It is scored for 3 flutes, piccolo, 3 oboes, 3 clarinets, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and orchestral strings. Martinů wrote his Sixth Symphony at the invitation of his friend Charles Münch, who was Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Martinů was one of the group of distinguished composers—Benjamin Britten, Darius Milhaud, Aaron Copland, Heitor Villa-Lobos and Leonard Bernstein among them—whom Münch commissioned to create new works to celebrate the orchestra’s seventy-fifth anniversary. Symphony No. 6 was received with great warmth by audiences in Boston and New York.

Its three sections, being much freer in form than standard symphonic movements, make the subtitle entirely appropriate. Martinů may have had some sort of dramatic or autobiographical program in mind while composing it. “A Story for Charles” was how he referred to it on one occasion. Giving voice to a yearning for his homeland is another possibility, an idea reinforced by his including in it quotations from his own music (the opera Julietta and the Field Mass), the Requiem Mass by fellow Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, and St. Wenceslas, a traditional Czech church chorale. If he did have outside influences in mind, he never revealed them He ingeniously based all three movements on a single three-note theme, a stunning feat of imagination for a work lasting half an hour. Music in a slow tempo bookends the first movement. In the opening panel, two muted trumpets introduce the principal theme. A bold, thrusting allegro bursts in suddenly, launching a striking set of variations on the main theme. The music radiates demonic energy to spare, but it also embraces reflection, in particular by way of a rhapsodic violin solo.

Much of the second movement has the character of a scherzo or joke, although the emotional atmosphere shifts so frequently and ranges across such broad territory that so simple a description cannot capture its personality. The finale also shuttles rapidly between extremes, from the initial, deeply emotional outcry for full orchestra, to a pair of driving allegros. Martinů concludes the piece, and his symphonic journey, with a quiet, solemn chorale, suggesting that he may finally have achieved the contentment and solace he had been seeking. Intermission Close Bohuslav Martinů was born in Poli?ka, Czech Republic on December 8, 1890 and died in Liestal, Switzerland on August 28, 1959. Martinů wrote his Sixth Symphony in 1953. It runs approximately 25 minutes in performance. It is scored for 3 flutes, piccolo, 3 oboes, 3 clarinets, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and orchestral strings.

Martinů wrote his Sixth Symphony at the invitation of his friend Charles Münch, who was Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Martinů was one of the group of distinguished composers—Benjamin Britten, Darius Milhaud, Aaron Copland, Heitor Villa-Lobos and Leonard Bernstein among them—whom Münch commissioned to create new works to celebrate the orchestra’s seventy-fifth anniversary. Symphony No. 6 was received with great warmth by audiences in Boston and New York. Its three sections, being much freer in form than standard symphonic movements, make the subtitle entirely appropriate. Martinů may have had some sort of dramatic or autobiographical program in mind while composing it. “A Story for Charles” was how he referred to it on one occasion. Giving voice to a yearning for his homeland is another possibility, an idea reinforced by his including in it quotations from his own music (the opera Julietta and the Field Mass), the Requiem Mass by fellow Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, and St. Wenceslas, a traditional Czech church chorale.

If he did have outside influences in mind, he never revealed them He ingeniously based all three movements on a single three-note theme, a stunning feat of imagination for a work lasting half an hour. Music in a slow tempo bookends the first movement. In the opening panel, two muted trumpets introduce the principal theme. A bold, thrusting allegro bursts in suddenly, launching a striking set of variations on the main theme. The music radiates demonic energy to spare, but it also embraces reflection, in particular by way of a rhapsodic violin solo. Much of the second movement has the character of a scherzo or joke, although the emotional atmosphere shifts so frequently and ranges across such broad territory that so simple a description cannot capture its personality. The finale also shuttles rapidly between extremes, from the initial, deeply emotional outcry for full orchestra, to a pair of driving allegros. Martinů concludes the piece, and his symphonic journey, with a quiet, solemn chorale, suggesting that he may finally have achieved the contentment and solace he had been seeking. Intermission Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat "Emperor", Op. 73 - Adagio un poco mosso - YouTube Piano Concerto No.

5 in E flat "Emperor", Op. 73 - Adagio un poco mosso Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Uploaded on Dec 28, 2008 Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat "Emperor", Op. 73 - Adagio un poco mosso Ludwig van Beethoven Another great Beethoven slow movement, following the violin concerto larghetto, which I recommend if you like(d) this! For a man with a permanent frown, he certainly wrote some of the most emotional music around... Category

Question: Who composed the Emperor Concerto?
Answer: Beethoven