Mindru Katz (piano)
Halle Orchestra
John Barbirolli (conductor)
1.Ìý´¡±ô±ô±ð²µ°ù´Ç
2. Adagio un poco moto –
3. Rondo: Allegro
Beethoven made his name in Vienna as a dashing young piano virtuoso in the 1790s, and his first large-scale concert – at the Burgtheater in March 1795 – afforded him the opportunity to display his dynamic pianism in his own Second Piano Concerto. Like Mozart before him, he saw the concerto as the perfect performing vehicle, giving him the opportunity to display his skills as composer, director and performer. Mozart’s career in Vienna in the 1780s revolved around giving concerts for which he composed and performed a miraculous run of 17 piano concertos; Beethoven would surely have done the same if deafness had not overtaken him, putting a premature end to his life as a performing musician. After the Fifth he was never to return to the concerto form.
In fact the last concerto Beethoven played himself was the Fourth – it was included in the gargantuan concert of 22 December 1808 at the Theater an der Wien that also included the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Choral Fantasy and parts of the Mass in C major. The Fifth Concerto was composed the following year, but Beethoven knew by this time that his days as a concert soloist were over. Reluctant to perform it himself, he dedicated it to Rudolph, Archduke of Austria, himself a gifted pianist (and already the dedicatee of the Fourth Concerto and numerous other works); Rudolph may have performed it privately, but no record of such a performance survives. It was finally performed in public, to a largely uncomprehending audience, by Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny in Leipzig on 28 November 1811.
The Fifth Piano Concerto is known in English-speaking countries as the ‘Emperor’ – an unauthentic title which has been attributed to John Baptist Cramer, a pianist and music publisher based in London, who was a long-time friend of Beethoven and champion of his music. The title seems apposite, though, given the work’s majestic grandeur and breadth of conception. Interestingly, it is in the same key and on a similar scale as the ‘Eroica’ Symphony of 1803, which had originally been dedicated to Napoleon – the emperor who had, by the time of the Fifth Piano Concerto, invaded Vienna, forcing many, including Archduke Rudolph, to flee the city (it was for the absence of the Archduke that Beethoven composed the ‘Les Adieux’ Sonata).
The scale and virtuosity of the ‘Emperor’ Concerto are stated categorically at the outset: a long piano cadenza punctuated by three orchestral chords, rather than the more usual orchestral exposition – a startling opening even by the standards of this most individual and innovative of early-19th-century composers. The Fourth Concerto had brought the piano in at the outset of the work, but for a different effect, treating the piano as a self-contained element, thereafter remaining silent for the rest of the exposition. Mozart had had a similar idea in 1777, in his ‘Jeunehomme’ Concerto, K271, in which the piano becomes part of the orchestral texture at the opening of the work, later to be reintroduced in the expected place. But the ‘Emperor’ Concerto’s explosion of virtuosity was something new in 1809.
The first movement is a piece of unrivalled and exhilarating dynamism, deriving nearly all of its primary material from the orchestra’s first theme, and lasting far longer than both the slow movement and the finale put together. The slow movement is in the sumptuous key of B major, and presents cumulative elaborations on the static hymn-like theme that rests like an oasis between the titanic outer movements. The coda hints subtly at the subsequent rondo’s theme – but without giving away too many clues – before leaping into the exuberant finale. Attempts are made to subdue the piano’s virtuosic flights of fancy – witness the astonishing war-like passage for piano and solo timpani close to the movement’s end – but the imperial spirit is indomitable, the piano’s swirling flourishes driving the rondo through audacious harmonies to the work’s triumphant conclusion.
David A. Threasher © Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú
