The brightest piano concerto of all time had its origin at a complex historic moment. In the spring of 1809, for the second time in less than four years, the Napoleonic troops were advancing on Vienna. This time they faced much more resistance than they had three and a half years ago, however, at the beginning of July, after bloody confrontations, the balance was tipped in favor of Napoleon. And as had happened in 1805, the nobility and the upper classes left the city, headed by Francis I of Austria, taking with him Archduke Rudolph, a friend, pupil, and patron of Beethoven.
The maestro remained in Vienna, amid the smoke and cannonballs. In a letter to his editor in Leipzig, he wrote:
"We have been suffering misery the most intensively, I only see chaos and destruction around me, and I only hear drums and cannons ... human misery in all its forms."
Certainly, in such a depressing environment it would appear difficult to write a work of such significance and transcendence. But Beethoven did, adding to it a couple of sonatas, one of them with a dedication for the archduke in flight, a sonata that sings to the abandonment, all this only explained by the time in which Beethoven lives, one in which wars are inherent to life.
Premières
Unlike the previous four releases, due to his hearing loss, Beethoven was not the soloist at the première of his last concert. The work, also dedicated to the archduke, had its first public audition in Leipzig on November 28, 1811. At the piano was Friedrich Schneider, of whom we only know his name.
The première in Vienna, an occupied city, took place the following year, on February 12, with Beethoven's pupil Karl Czerny at the piano, who, unlike the one mentioned above, is remembered as the author of some exhausting exercises that since those years take up the whole day of the future pianists.
"Emperor"
According to legend, in the Viennese première, an enthusiastic French officer would have risen from his seat and exclaimed loudly: "Ah ... it's the Emperor !!" It is one of the myths trying to explain the popular title of such a great concert. There are other hypotheses. But this one established a link, in one way or another, with Napoleon, badly for the maestro, who, in all fairness, would later remove his name from the Eroica Symphony, after the self-coronation of the Corsican.
It is undeniable, too, that there is no other adjective that best evokes the work's majesty and large scale. Its great dimensions, that certain martial character, its loftiness, together with the incomparable lyricism of its central movement, reserve the work a prominent place among the decisive works in Beethoven's heroic vein.
Piano Concerto No 5 in E flat major, "Emperor" - Movements:
00:00 Allegro
21:43 Adagio a little mosso
29:15 Rondo - Allegro ma non troppo
The rendition is by Krystian Zimerman, accompanied by Leonard Bernstein conducting the Wiener Philharmoniker.
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