Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major, op. 73 ("Emperor")
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings,
Duration: 38 minutes in three movements.
THE COMPOSER – LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827) – Vienna was under French bombardment and eventual occupation during the spring and summer of 1809, the year in which Beethoven completed the bulk of the 5th Piano Concerto. It was a decidedly unhappy time for the composer, with the city emptied of friends and benefactors and with contact to the rest of Europe nonexistent. The work was not premiered until November of 1811, not surprisingly in Leipzig rather than Vienna.
THE MUSIC – Beethoven never performed the 5th Piano Concerto himself. Given the fact that the first four were essentially written for his own concert use, this seems a clear indication that his deafness had progressed to a point that made public solo appearances impossible. Instead, Friedrich Schneider handled Leipzig concert while Beethoven's pupil Carl Czerny played the Vienna premiere later in 1812. Like so many of the nicknamed pieces throughout music history, the moniker of "Emperor" was not applied by Beethoven. One wonders if he would have tolerated it given the damage Vienna suffered at the hands of the current self-proclaimed "Emperor" Napoleon but nevertheless, the heroic appellation is quite apt today. The 5th Concerto, incidentally Beethoven's final foray into the genre, is impressively regal in scale and impact. Gone forever is the idea of the concerto as a virtuosic display work, with a pre-ordained formal structure and an orchestra tasked solely with the passive accompaniment of the soloist. Plenty of dazzling virtuosity is on display here but the "Emperor" Concerto, like the 4th Concerto before it, is essentially a three-movement symphony with solo piano. Beethoven eschews many of the accepted conventions in the 5th Concerto (placing cadenzas at the beginning of the first movement rather than the end, for example) and the sum of his innovations kicked down the door of Classical era tradition, clearing a path for the even more grandly proportioned works of Brahms and Rachmaninoff.
THE WORLD – Elsewhere in 1811, Paraguay and Venezuela declared their independence from Spain, the Battle of Tippecanoe was fought in America, and England's Mad King George III was deemed too insane to rule and was effectively replaced by the Prince of Wales.
THE CONNECTION – The "Emperor" Concerto is programmed often by the Utah Symphony, most recently in 2007 with Keith Lockhart conducting and Andre Watts as soloist.
