BEETHOVEN PIANO CONCERTO NO. 3 ANALYSIS FULL
BEETHOVEN PIANO CONCERTO NO. 3 ANALYSIS SERIES

Since then he has captivated audiences worldwide with a unique combination of deep musical sensitivity, fearless imagination and spectacular virtuosity. In 2009, Haochen Zhang was the youngest pianist ever to receive the Gold Medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. This trend continued and reached its fullness in the Fourth and Fifth Concertos, which today rank among the great composer’s most admired works. In the piano part, Beethoven pushes the instrument to its limits, leading commentators to remark that he was writing for the piano of the future. After the first two concertos, which still closely follow the models of Haydn and Mozart, Concerto No. 3 requires great virtuosity from the pianist its last movement is a bravura section as dazzling as any ever composed. With his five piano concertos composed between 17, he not only achieved a brilliant conclusion to the Classical piano concerto, but also established a new model for the Romantic era: a sort of symphony with obbligato piano which was to remain a reference point well into the twentieth century. 'As one of the finest pianists of his era and an improviser of genius, Ludwig van Beethoven’s preferred vehicle for musical exploration was the piano. Many pianists have made recordings of this concerto including Arthur Rubinstein, Claudio Arrau, Krystian Zimerman, Emil Gilels, Radu Lupu, Glenn Gould, Maurizio Pollini, Wilhelm Kempff, Alfred Brendel, Mitsuko Uchida, Martha Argerich, Sviatoslav Richter and Paul Lewis. Cadenzas by other composersĬomposers who have written alternative cadenzas for the first movement include Harold Bauer, Amy Beach, Johannes Brahms, Carl Czerny, Gabriel Fauré, Adolf von Henselt, Mischa Levitzki, Franz Liszt, Freidrich Mockwitz(Lost), Ignaz Moscheles, Carl Reinecke, Ferdinand Ries(Lost), Clara Schumann, Gino Tagliapietra and Charles-Valentin Alkan. I saw almost nothing but empty pages at the most, on one page or another a few Egyptian hieroglyphs wholly unintelligible to me were scribbled down to serve as clues for him for he played nearly all the solo part from memory since, as was so often the case, he had not had time to set it all down on paper. Beethoven's friend, Ignaz von Seyfried, who turned the pages of the music for him that night, later wrote: The score was incomplete at its first performance. The movement ends with a C major coda marked presto. The movement begins in C minor with an agitated theme played only by the piano. The opening is marked with detailed pedalling instructions. The second movement, which is in E major, opens with the solo piano.

BEETHOVEN PIANO CONCERTO NO. 3 ANALYSIS FULL

Then the music intensifies before a full tutti occurs, followed by the piano playing descending arpeggios, the ascending scale from the second exposition, and finally a resolute ending on C.

BEETHOVEN PIANO CONCERTO NO. 3 ANALYSIS SERIES

The piano plays a series of arpeggios before the music settles into the home key of C minor. The orchestra was the Viennese second-string, the city’s best players having been hired by a competing presenter for a performance of Haydn’s The Creation that same evening. Codaīeethoven subverts the expectation of a return to the tonic at the end of the cadenza by prolonging the final trill and eventually arriving on a dominant seventh. According to Beethoven’s pupil Ferdinand Ries, the rehearsal, the only rehearsal for the entire concert, began at 8am and was a shambles. The cadenza Beethoven wrote is at times stormy and ends on a series of trills that calm down to pianissimo. Cadenzaīeethoven wrote one cadenza for this movement. A dark transition to the cadenza occurs, immediately switching from C Major to C Minor.

For the return of the second subject, Beethoven modulates to the tonic major, C major. The orchestra restates the theme in fortissimo, with the wind instruments responding by building up a minor 9th chord as in the exposition. The piano enters, playing similar scales used in the beginning of the second exposition, this time in D major rather than c minor. The structure of the exposition in the piano solo is similar to that of the orchestral exposition. The piano enters with an ascending scale motif. In the third section (second subject), the clarinet introduces the second main theme, which is in the relative major key, E flat major. In the orchestral exposition, the theme is introduced by the strings, and used throughout the movement. This movement is known to make forceful use of the theme (direct and indirect) throughout. As is standard for Classical/ Romantic-era concertos, the work is in three movements:

Beethoven piano concerto no. 3 analysis