Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37

Program notes

About the Work

Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto sits on a threshold. Sketched from about 1800 and first played in 1803, it is the work in which his concertos stop sounding like brilliant continuations of Mozart and start sounding like Beethoven. It is in C minor, and its outer movements are stormy and restless.

The debt to Mozart is still audible, and seems deliberate. Mozart had written his own C minor piano concerto, K. 491, and Beethoven’s concerto shows a keen awareness of it. Both works open quietly in the strings with a rising theme, and both let the storm gather before the soloist arrives. Where Mozart’s darkness stays veiled, Beethoven’s piano enters with forceful rising scales, as if pushing the door open.

The premiere, on 5 April 1803 in Vienna, was one of the long benefit concerts Beethoven organised for himself. The same programme also brought the first performances of his Second Symphony and his oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives. Beethoven was the soloist, and the solo part was not finished. Ignaz von Seyfried, who turned pages for him that evening, later recalled seeing “almost nothing but empty pages”, with a few scribbles he described as Egyptian hieroglyphs to serve as clues. Beethoven played most of it from memory, nodding to Seyfried each time a page needed turning, and was greatly amused afterwards by his page-turner’s anxiety. The written-out solo part came later, and the concerto was published in 1804.

For all its drama, the concerto is also a work of great tenderness. Its slow movement is set in E major, a key so far from C minor that the first entry of the piano sounds like a door opening onto another room.

Rudolf Buchbinder has recorded all five Beethoven concertos more than once, including with the Vienna Philharmonic.

What to Listen For

I. Allegro con brio. A long orchestral introduction lays out the main themes: a quiet, marching C minor figure in the strings, answered by the winds, and a gentler second theme that arrives in the major. When the piano finally enters, it does so with a flurry of rising scales, and from then on soloist and orchestra argue over the same material. Keep an ear on the short rhythmic motif of the opening theme; Beethoven hammers it home throughout. After the cadenza, instead of the expected orchestral full stop, the piano prolongs its final trill and keeps going with rippling arpeggios before the orchestra returns and the movement closes resolutely in C minor.

II. Largo. The piano opens alone in E major, playing a slow, hymn-like melody with detailed pedal markings that let the chords blur and resonate. The orchestra, with muted strings, answers in the same hushed tone, and as the movement unfolds the piano’s arpeggios curl around the melody when the orchestra takes it up.

III. Rondo: Allegro. The piano sets off alone with an agitated, off-balance tune back in C minor, and the orchestra takes it up with force. The rondo alternates this theme with contrasting episodes, some full of humour, others blunt and dramatic. At the very end the music shakes off the minor key: a quick coda, marked Presto, turns the main theme into a cheerful C major romp.