Reflections on performing all the Beethoven Piano Concertos

by Jeffrey Kahane, Music Director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

Note: This piece was written by Jeffrey Kahane on the occasion of his performance of the five Beethoven piano concertos with the Santa Rosa Symphony in November, 2000, and with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in December, 2001. Mr. Kahane will be again performing these five concertos at the Oregon Bach Festival in July, 2003, and in two concerts with LACO at the Hollywood Bowl in August, 2003.

This article was originally published on the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra website.

Why, a listener might well ask, would anyone want to perform all the Beethoven piano concertos in the space of two evenings, and – perhaps the more important question – what is to be gained from listening to them in this way? Is it just a highbrow stunt meant to impress, or is there a serious purpose behind the project? It seems only proper to acknowledge at the outset that the concerto form naturally has an inherent element of display, a quality of "let me show you what I can do." Nonetheless, there is a deeper intent in the greatest works in the genre, beginning with the solo concerti of Bach and even more so in the late concertos of Mozart, continuing through those of Beethoven and Brahms and on through Dvorak, Schumann, Sibelius, Bartok and others, the intent to provide the soloist not only with a showcase for virtuosity, but with a structure within which to say something meaningful, and sometimes deeply personal. We forget, too often, that the Latin root "virtus" of the Italian word "virtuoso" implies not only excellence (i.e., technical achievement), but courage and virtue. In other words, the phrase "empty virtuosity" which we sometimes use to refer to a dazzling display of technique, is in fact an oxymoron: there is no true virtuosity without "virtue" in the deepest sense of the word. In one way, the Beethoven Concertos, seen as a whole, describing an arc of personal growth that over a period of more than a decade begins to some extent with "let me show you what I can do" and finally becomes "let me tell you what I have to say...." Indeed, with Beethoven the soloist evolves into a symbol for the individual striving to excel, to act nobly, to inspire.

When I taught conservatory students, I tried to instill in them, with only occasional success, the fundamental principle that one could not really understand a composer's language fully without knowing the greater part of his work. Although of course one can appreciate any great piece of music to some extent simply on its own terms, I don't believe anyone can fully appreciate a Beethoven string quartet without knowing all of his quartets to at least some degree, because in one sense they constitute a single, magnificent musical autobiography; one might say they constitute and describe one of the most profound spiritual journeys ever expressed in any art form. This is also true to a great extent of Beethoven's piano sonatas. It is, to be sure, less true of his symphonies and concertos, perhaps because they are more "public" music, less suited to the intimate communication characteristic of his music for smaller forces. Even so, the five piano concertos, performed and experienced as a whole, do tell a story, and do describe an extraordinary evolution in style, technique, and in the growth and development of Beethoven's soul and intellect.

Beethoven inherited from Mozart's concerto a form so perfectly developed in every respect, that we can actually observe in the first three concertos his struggle to fashion his own identity with respect to the form. On hearing a performance of Mozart's C minor Concerto in Vienna, Beethoven is said to have remarked to his pupil Cramer, "Ah, Cramer, we will never be able to do anything like that." In his first two concertos Beethoven does not even attempt to match the profundity of that work, choosing consciously instead (for the most part) to imitate the jovial, brilliant, songful side of Mozart's concerto style, itself an outgrowth of the language of comic opera. If the first two concertos do not achieve the absolute perfection or profundity of the great late Mozart concerti, they nonetheless contain a tremendous amount of sublime (and occasionally outrageous) music – not to mention that fact both were written a man in his early twenties!

In the third concerto, the young, ebullient and successful young virtuoso gives way to the troubled but increasingly masterful and mature composer. (The first signs of Beethoven's deafness manifested themselves after the first two concertos were composed.) The Third Concerto, Janus-faced, manages to pay overt tribute to Mozart and his C minor Concerto while creating something entirely new, a kind of proto-Romantic concerto, which, interestingly, would serve in turn as one of the models for Brahms in his D minor Concerto half a century later. The Third Concerto is, in fact, one of the first of the composer's orchestral works that could never be mistaken for Mozart or Haydn. It is one of Beethoven's first steps on his inward journey of exploration.

If the five concertos are viewed as five chapters of a story, then it is (as one might expect in a good story) in the next to the last chapter that the greatest surprise comes. The Fourth Concerto is not only among the most unusual, most radical works that had yet been created by anyone, it remains one of the eternally self-renewing miracles in all of composed music, indeed one of the ultimate examples of the transcendence of form. I have played it more than any other work in my repertoire; indeed I lost count long ago of the number of times I've played it, and it is as thrilling and inspiring to me now as it ever was, if not more so. In my mind, it is worth playing the five concertos together if only to highlight the extraordinary audacity of Beethoven's opening gesture of this concerto: the first time in the history of the form that the solo instrument opens a concerto alone (and, I might point out, it was many years before any other important composer tried the same gambit). In this work, the soloist as hero grows into the role of philosopher, poet, seeker, myth-maker. It is particularly worth noting that the trumpets and timpani are silent through the entire first two movements of the piece, and, even more dramatically, the second movement is for piano in a dialogue with only the string instruments. (In fact, I cannot think of another instance of this in the important piano concerto repertoire until the 20th century!) When the trumpets and drums, along with the winds who have been silent observers for the whole second movement, finally burst out in a joyful, indeed almost raucous explosion a minute or so into the last movement, the effect is like stepping out into brilliant sunshine after spending a long and contemplative time deep in the woods, or perhaps even in a cave or underground. There is a tradition, dating back to the time of Liszt, which associates the slow movement with the myth of Orpheus taming the Furies. Whether or not there is actual substance to this, I can think of very few pages in music that come so close to articulate speech, or that so movingly reenact the power of humility and gentleness to melt the hardened and angry heart, as do those of the central movement of the G major Concerto. It is not the conquering hero but the still, small voice that wins the battle in this work.

The last concerto, which for a long time now has been known by the sobriquet "Emperor," is one of the best known and best loved works in the literature. At one time, I remember reading somewhere, there were more recordings of this piece in the catalog than any other piece of classical music. There is, of course, a danger to any work of art when it becomes so familiar that we lose sight of how remarkable and pathbreaking it is. This can certainly be said of many of Beethoven's most famous works, and the Fifth Concerto, like the Fourth, benefits particularly from being heard in close proximity to its four siblings, particularly its immediate predecessor, from which it is so utterly different that someone who didn't know Beethoven's music well might think it by another man altogether.

It is rather amazing that the journey from the earliest of the concertos (and remember that the one we call no. 2 was actually composed before no. 1, but was published later and thus bears the later number) to the last of them took only about fifteen years, and that in the process of that journey the scope, sound and in some ways the very nature of the concerto form would be changed forever. At nearly forty minutes, the Fifth concerto is substantially longer than any concerto written previously, and longer than any that would be written until those of Brahms. Not merely length but also style and tone, and, of course, the orchestration, make this the prototype of the "symphonic" concerto. Like the orchestral expositions Brahms concertos, the grand orchestral exposition that follows the soloist's opening cadenza/dialogue with the orchestra feels almost like a symphony, and I believe that was in fact, in part, the intention. It is both interesting and historically significant that in this piece, for the first time in the history of the form, Beethoven expressly forbids the introduction of a cadenza by the performer at the traditional moment towards the end of the first movement, writing in fearsome Italian, "Non si fa una cadenza, m'attacca subito il seguente." (Do not play a cadenza, but rather immediately play the following passage!) At this very moment, when might expect a huge and grand improvisation to match the enormous scale of the first movement, Beethoven writes instead a brief but hair-raising cadenza-like passage that leads seamlessly into a coda that with perfect naturalness traverses an emotional landscape ranging from icy and remote to meltingly warm and Romantic, and, finally thrillingly triumphant. Beethoven often manages to create monuments out of the simplest building blocks, but rarely so impressively as he does in the first movement of this work.

If the master could be accused of displaying a bit of machismo in the first movement of the Fifth, nowhere in all his music does he show greater tenderness than in the second movement, perhaps a cross between a nocturne and a hymn, which to my ear prefigures both Chopin and Brahms. In yet another significant step towards the Romantic concerto, Beethoven chooses (as he does often in later works, and as Mendelssohn, Schumann and Liszt would imitate) to link the final two movements with a magically inspired, but characteristically simple transition passage, rather than risking a pause between movements which would break the mood. The Rondo finale ends the cycle in a spirit of unbridled fun and good humor, but not without another astoundingly visionary stroke of genius, in the brief but breathtaking passage where the piano and timpani alone (how few composers have written for the kettledrums with such respect and imagination!) appear to be winding down this grandest of concertos to a most unlikely peaceful and restful conclusion, only to have the piano change its mind at the last moment in a final burst of athletic brilliance.

Finally, what are we to make of the fact that Beethoven, after creating five masterpieces, did not write another piano concerto after 1809, although he lived almost another twenty years? As a matter of fact, there are, tantalizingly, sketches for a later piano concerto, in D major, but, like the sketches for a tenth symphony, they leave us only with a glimpse of what might have been. There is, for those who are interested, another "piano" concerto, which is simply an arrangement for piano and orchestra of the violin concerto which Beethoven made largely for financial reasons, but which (for reasons that mystify this pianist) some pianists actually enjoy playing. There also exists another little work which occasionally surfaces in concert from time to time, a rondo in B flat major of about 8 minutes which was apparently the original and discarded last movement of the 2nd Concerto.

These five works, which run an expressive gamut that ranges from impish schoolboy humor to achingly tender romance to soulrending grief to transcendent joy, have been my friends, companions, teachers, since I first started performing publicly almost thirty years ago, and my primary reason for this project is to bring them all together and allow them, metaphorically speaking, to "talk to one another." The very first concerto I ever performed with an orchestra was the Third, with the San Francisco Conservatory Orchestra when I was 16, and of course I have played all of them many times since, but they remain evergreen to me, which, it seems to me, is the very definition of a classic. I hope that the experience of hearing the five concertos as a cycle will provide even the most seasoned listener with at least an occasional new perspective on these beloved works.

- Jeffrey Kahane