Piano Concerto No. 4 in G, Opus 58
Composition and premiere: Beethoven composed the Fourth Piano Concerto in 1805 and early 1806. The first performance was a private one, in March 1807, at the home of his patron Prince Lobkowitz. The public premiere took place at Vienna’s Theater-an-der-Wien on December 22, 1808, with the composer as soloist, in the same concert that included, among many other things, the premieres of his Fifth and Sixth symphonies. The first BSO performance of the concerto was conducted by Georg Henschel on December 17, 1881, during the orchestra’s first season, with soloist George W. Sumner. Serge Koussevitzky led the BSO in the first Tanglewood performance, with soloist Joseph Battista, on August 3, 1947.
Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto was written during a period of intense artistic creativity that included his Symphony No. 4, the Violin Concerto, the Triple Concerto, and the three great Razumovsky string quartets, all groundbreaking works. He dedicated the Fourth Concerto to his friend, patron, and pupil, Archduke Rudolph of Austria, who was also the dedicatee of the Piano Concerto No. 5, the Missa Solemnis, and much else.
During 1807, Beethoven actively sought an appropriate venue for his first concert in six years given for his own benefit. In 1808 he was finally able to secure a theater and orchestra, and on December 22 that year he presented a public concert the likes of which the large audience, packed into a freezing hall, could hardly have anticipated. The program consisted of more than four hours of music, all of it new to the Vienna audience. And, as things turned out, this 1808 appearance would be the last time he performed in public as a concerto soloist, due to his rapidly progressing deafness. In addition to the first public performance of his Fourth Concerto (which concluded the first half of the concert, with Beethoven as soloist), the program opened with the premiere of the Pastoral Symphony, then continued in the first half with the first Vienna performance of the concert aria “Ah! perfido” and the Gloria from his Mass in C. Following intermission came the premiere of the Fifth Symphony, the first Vienna performance of the Sanctus from the Mass in C, a piano improvisation by Beethoven, and the first performance of the Choral Fantasy.
The Piano Concerto No. 4 introduced the audience to something completely new. Gone were the grand gestures meant merely for pianistic display. Instead, the concerto concentrated on a more personal and intimate style, infused with tranquility and lyricism. The very opening, so unusual for the time, signals this new path immediately. The piano begins alone, playing a beautifully simple tune in full chords in the middle register, marked piano, dolce (“softly, sweetly”). Entering after the soloist’s initial statement, the orchestra seems hesitant to interrupt the contemplative and intimate opening of the piano. Only after a few minutes does it swell to a full tutti and the dialogue between soloist and orchestra truly ensue.
The second movement follows no traditional formal design. Beethoven organizes his musical material as a dialogue between the orchestra, playing forte with an almost angry tutti, and the soloist’s quiet pleading, in music written to sound almost as if it were an improvisation. The great musician and writer Adolf Bernhard Marx likened the soloist’s songlike role in this movement to that of Orpheus taming the wild beasts with his lyre. The third movement follows immediately after a final gentle gesture from the piano. The orchestra plays quietly, but with a hint of mischief, and the game is afoot. This is his only piano concerto in which Beethoven begins the third movement with the orchestra rather than the soloist alone—a reversal of what happens in the work’s opening movement. A particularly exhilarating coda ends the finale in high spirits.
Elizabeth Seitz
Elizabeth Seitz is a faculty member at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, a frequent guest speaker for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Boston Lyric Opera, and a musicologist whose interests range from Mozart, Schubert, and Mahler to Falla and Tito Puente.
