Beethoven Piano Concerto No 5 in E-flat major Op 73 Emperor

I did a write up on Beethoven's 1st Piano Concerto not too long ago and thought that it would be appropriate to write about his 5th or last Piano Concerto as it is also one of the recorded to death pieces having been recorded by many artists both established as well as green shoots genre. In the Anglophile world, it is also commonly referred to as the Emperor piece and this arose my curiosity as I remembered that Beethoven who was to dedicate his Symphony number 3 to Napoleon Bonaparte was angry enough at the news of Napoleon declaring himself as Emperor to rename the piece to Eroica instead. There is some period between Eroica Symphony and Emperor Piano Concerto as the former carries an opus number of 55 whereas the latter was assigned an opus number of 73. The opus number roughly reflects the chronological order in terms of date of the work being published and does not necessarily reflect the time the composer started or completed the work actually. Putting this aside, I can think of why the name Emperor as Beethoven might have gotten used to the idea of Napoleon making himself emperor or perhaps pragmatism rules the day even for eccentric tempered Beethoven as Napoleon's campaign has walked over much of Austria where he largely lives. One thing is definite that Beethoven did not dedicate this piece to Napoleon as it was clearly addressed to Archduke Rudolf.

Actually Beethoven did not meant the Emperor Piano Concerto to be his last as there is evidenced pointing to fragments of work in progress on the 6th Piano Concerto but too little of the Piano or Orchestration parts exists for modern day Beethoven scholars to piece together a respectable Piano Concerto. It is also at this period that his hearing has almost been reduced to nil and much of the composing is done through his mental perception rather than auditory perception of his work. I was interacting with a customer in a hifi shop today and I advised him that hifi is a hobby that is best enjoyed younger as our hearing sensitivity decline with age.

Beethoven is not as tightly associated with piano music as Chopin where every single piece of his features the piano either in major or minor roles. To Beethoven, the piano is a convenient platform to test the orchestration for his symphonies, concertos etc. All being said, Beethoven did a strange thing by having the solo piano start the piece for almost 2 minutes before the orchestra joins in. This is not very common in classical era works but was sometimes used by composers in the romantic era like Tchaikovsky in his piano concerto and Mendelssohn in his violin concerto. To me, there is no question here that the soloist is meant to be the star of the piece rather than the orchestra.

Although this piece consists of the template 3 movements concerto tradition, it is sometimes mistaken as a 2 movement piece as movements 2 and 3 is connected by a single bassoon note. This technique is also used by some other composers perhaps to ensure that the less musically inclined audience does not disturb the continuity of the piece by clapping in between movements.

I shall refrain from making a comparison of the various recordings as I have not done enough comparative listening to do justice and shall only list the pieces I have listened to in writing this review.

1. Piere-Laurent Aimard with Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting Chamber Orchestra of Europe

2. Christian Zacharias with Hans Vonk conducting Staatskapelle Dresden

3. Alfred Brendel with Zubin Mehta conducting Vienna Symphony Orchestra

4. Artur Pizarro with Charles Mackerras conducting Scottish Chamber Orchestra

5. Steffan Viader with Barry Wordsworth conducting Capella Istropolitana

6. Vladmir Ashkenazy with Zubin Metha conducting Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

As I related to some of my friends, my motivation for writing about classical music is to help propagate classical music to the next generation as it would be a waste if classical music declines starting with my generation. I have not succeeded in getting my two children interested in classical music but I do hope that they will someday.

Cheers,,,,,Peter Lye aka lkypeter

Safe Harbor. Please note that information contained in these pages are of a personal nature and does not necessarily reflect that of any companies, organizations or individuals. In addition, some of these opinions are of a forward looking nature. Lastly the facts and opinions contained in these pages might not have been verified for correctness, so please use with caution. Happy Reading. Peter Lye