There are noble pages, also moments of tenderness, in the first movement; there is a majestic, compelling sweep. In the second movement there is simplicity, serenity of contemplation, Buddhistic music of singular detachment, found only in certain measures of Beethoven and Handel; but the finale with the endless repetitions of a Kangaroo theme leads one to long for the end.
Beethoven, having made some sketches in 1808, wrote this concerto in 1809 at Vienna. The town was occupied by the French from May 12 to October 14.
It is said that the first public performance of which there is any record was at Leipsic on November 28, 1811. It is also stated that this performance was late in 1810. The pianist was Friedrich Schneider. The Allgemeine Musik Zeitung described the concerto as “without doubt one of the most original, imaginative, effective, but most difficult of all existing concertos.” Schneider, it seems, played “with soul” as well as force, and the orchestra accompanied remarkably, for “it respected and admired composer, composition, and pianist.”
The first performance with which Beethoven was concerned was at Vienna on February 12, 1812, when Karl Czerny (1791-1857) was the pianist. The occasion was a singular sort of entertainment. Theodor Körner, who had been a looker-on in Vienna only for a short time, wrote home on February 15: “Wednesday there took place for the benefit of the Charitable Society of Noble Ladies a concert and a representation of three pictures after Raphael, Poussin, and Troyes, as Goethe describes them in his Elective Affinities. A new concerto by Beethoven for the pianoforte did not succeed”; but Castelli’s Thalia gave as the reason of this failure the unwillingness of Beethoven, “full of proud self-confidence,” to write for the crowd. “He can be understood and appreciated only by the connoisseurs, and one cannot reckon on their being in a majority at such an affair.” Thayer moralizes on this statement. “The trills of Miss Sessi and Mr. Siboni and Mayseder’s Variations on the March from Aline were appropriate to the occasion and the audience.”
The Vienna correspondent of the Allgemeine Musik Zeitung wrote that the extravagant length of the concerto diminished the total effect which the “noble production of the mind” would otherwise have made. As for Czerny, “he played with much accuracy and fluency, and showed that he has it in his power to conquer the greatest difficulties.” But the correspondent wished that there had been greater purity in his performance, a finer contour.
The tableaux pleased mightily, and each one was repeated.
The first movement, allegro, in E flat, 4-4, opens with a strong chord for full orchestra, which is followed by a cadenza for the solo instrument.
The first theme is given out by the strings and afterward taken up by the clarinets. The second theme soon follows, first in E flat minor, softly and staccato by the strings, then legato and in E flat major by the horns. It was usual at that time for the pianist to extemporize his cadenza, but Beethoven inserted his own with the remark, “non si fa, una cadenza ma s’attacca subito il seguente” (that is to say, “Do not insert a cadenza, but attack the following immediately”); and he then went so far as to accompany with the orchestra the latter portion of his cadenza.
The second movement, adagio un poco moto, in B major, 2-2, is in the form of “quasi-variations,” developed chiefly from the theme given at the beginning by muted strings. This movement goes, with a suggestion hinted by the pianoforte of the coming first theme of the rondo, into the rondo, the finale, allegro, in E flat, 6-8. Both the themes are announced by the pianoforte and developed elaborately. The end of the coda is distinguished by a descending long series of pianoforte chords which steadily diminish in force, while the kettledrums keep marking the rhythm of the opening theme.