The Seven Concertos of Beethoven

Antony Hopkins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429773709
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Musique

First published in 1996, this volume counters the attitude of paying more attention to the performer than to the piece. Too often, Anthony Hopkins argues, music is simply regarded as a pleasant background noise to accompany our other activities, whereas Beethoven offers much more than that. Hopkins aim to promote hearing, rather than listening. He examines Beethoven's piano concertos numbers 1 through 5, along with the violin concerto in D Major, Op. 61, and the Triple Concerto, Op. 56.

Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Major, Op. 15

1 Flute, 2 Oboes, 2 Clarinets, 2 Bassoons, 2 Horns, 2 Trumpets, Timpani, Strings.

It is hard to understand why publishers, having successfully tackled the problem of renumbering the Dvořák symphonies, persist in calling this piano concerto Number One when Beethoven himself in a letter to Breitkopf and Hartel dated 22 April, 1801, makes it clear that it was written later than the Concerto in B flat habitually called Number Two. Admittedly the 'Second' concerto was published later in a somewhat revised version, which explains the later opus number. Beethoven's words in the letter refer to two other publishers:

Hoffmeister is publishing one of my first concertos, which of course is not one of my best compositions. Mollo is also publishing a concerto which was written later, it is true, but which also is not one of my best compositions of that type.

Trans. Emily Anderson, Vol. 1, page 53.

Beethoven's slightly dismissive remarks about the two concertos are best explained by the fact that he was hoping to ingratiate himself with a rival publisher, and naturally wanted to give the impression that the best was still to come. Simple detective work with first editions tells us that Hoffmeister published the concerto in B flat, Op. 19, and that Mollo printed the one in C, here under discussion.

A quick glance at the score tells us at once that Beethoven intended this to be a work of greater importance than its ill-starred predecessor for it demands five more players in the orchestra: two clarinets, two trumpets and timpani. Even so it begins quietly with strings only, and the full impact of his resources is reserved until bar 16 when there is a much reinforced version of the opening idea. It is in the character of a little march, whose most notable feature is a remarkably simple one, the jump of an octave.

Ex. 1a

This, as shown in bar 1, proves to be extremely susceptible to development, as Beethoven reveals later. (It is nearly always the ease that in allegro movements he uses terse and succinct phrases greatly to his advantage; the Fifth Symphony is perhaps the supreme example.) The juxtaposition of loud and soft that is to be found in the B flat Concerto is here reversed and extended so that sixteen bars of quiet music is followed by forty bars as loud as he can make them. This louder section presents us with several subsidiary themes, of which one is of particular interest as it may be a seed from which a passage in the Fifth Concerto grew in Beethoven's mind.

Ex. 1b

The idea of the rising scale against a more sustained descent is certainly planted here; whether Beethoven was conscious of any resemblance between two widely separated works is a matter for conjecture.

The music stays resolutely in C major for an unusually long time, the one brush with the dominant (G major) being over almost before it has registered. However, the second subject, when it arrives after a dramatic silence, is in the very unconventional key of E flat major:

Ex. 1C

The woodwind have a bland response to this against which the violins have uneasy syncopations leading us to the even more unconventional F minor. The whole process is repeated, bringing us to G minor. At this point Beethoven begins a series of short modulatory phrases which take him nearer home with a hushed excursion to C minor. A link between the starting-point C and the unusual key of the second subject has at least been established for C minor and E flat major share a common key signature of three flats.

Will this offer Beethoven an easy way home to the tonic? No. The journey is deferred. The bassoon, hotly followed by the oboe, leads off with a reminder of the rising octave that began the piece. In no time we are plunged into a positive musical maelstrom with the full orchestra pitting the rising octaves against defiant scales which, after a visit to the sub-dominant (F major), land triumphantly on C major. The horns and oboes celebrate this with a joyous march that sounds as if Mozart had written it for Figaro; it is punctuated by a giggling phrase from the violins (which is deliberately trivial) as all the wind instruments, trumpets included, take up the march. After some perfunctory twirls we are reminded forcibly again of the importance of the rising octave from bar 1; four times it is declaimed by wind or strings alternately. At last, with a rousing cadence confirming C major as the 'home' key this long introductory tutti comes to a close. At the entry of the soloist, Beethoven shows that he has learnt something from Mozart for he makes no attempt to contend with the orchestra; in fact the piano is almost apologetic so elementary are its first phrases, so lacking in display. Strangely enough this theme never appears later in the movement; its sole function seems to be to establish the individuality of the performer. Soon the orchestra gets back to basics with peremptory reminders of that all-important rising octave; this time it is greeted with cascades of arpeggios by the soloist. For the first time the pianist now takes notice of the octave, sometimes in the left hand, sometimes in the right, but it is never slavishly repetitive in his treatment and seems by turns a little angry or sardonic. In quite a short time the octave is given a new character by flowering into a melody which leads us via E flat major to stormy chromaticisms in G minor.

It is in the major of that key that the second subject now makes a gracious reappearance. (Mozart would probably not have revealed it so openly in the tutti, keeping it as a surprise until this moment; but Beethoven is still learning his craft and has other surprises of his own up his sleeve, as we shall hear in due course.) At first in the orchestra, but then in an increasingly florid version by the soloist, the theme is allowed to run its full course before flute and bassoon introduce a brief but tender motif whose repeated notes possibly bear a faint family relationship to the first bar of the work, although it is as remote as a second cousin twice removed.

Soon the soloist embarks on an athletic version of the 'Figaro' march, followed by a whirligig movement which transfers from the right to the left hand. Quite a little storm develops, with exciting chromatic triplets in the bass which later find their way into the upper part. There follows a wonderfully inventive passage, perhaps the most beautiful in the movement, in which the soloist initiates a long descent, modulating through a number of different keys before emerging satisfyingly into a drawn-out cadence based on Example ib (page 12). A long trill signals the arrival at a centrepoint of the movement and a quite substantial section for orchestra based at first on a contrapuntal treatment of the first bar; it is another example of Beethoven's ingenuity in developing such veiy basic ideas. After a considerable flurry of notes there is a silence, followed by a hushed reminder of the opening four notes – only this time they are based on G. Another silence. Tentatively the strings try the pattern a semitone higher on A flat. The full orchestra sees the possibilities in this and makes a huge unequivocal declaration that the future lies in E flat and no mistake.

The soloist responds with a long improvisatory passage based on an E flat arpeggio that would not be out of place in the Fifth Concerto. The music seems to shake off its classical restraint and becomes much more expansive. In no way a development of things that have gone before, it enables the soloist to establish complete independence. Further anticipation of the textures to be found in the Fifth Concerto appear in a passage where both hands move in parallel with chords an octave apart. The passage has a mature serenity about it quite different from the busy activity of nearly all of the rest of the movement.

Having allowed the soloist considerable freedom for some time, bassoon and then flute restore order with quiet reminders of the opening rising octave while the piano makes gruff comments in staccato unisons in triplets. The woodwind choir continues to develop the octave idea, disregarding the soloist, until an intriguing and mysterious section when the piano is given long, quiet descending chromatic scales that are not dissimilar to a passage in the recapitulation of the first movement of the Fifth Concerto. Indeed this work seems to contain the seed of the later one, nowhere more so than in a wonderfully hushed duet between piano and unison horns which strangely anticipates a passage near the end of the so-called 'Emperor' when the duet is between soloist and timpani. A slashing glissando in octaves, easy to execute on a light-touched piano of Beethoven's time but hard to bring off on a modern instrument, leads to what appears at first to be a conventional recapitulation for the full orchestra. It lasts precisely seven- and-a-half bars before the soloist takes over with a derivation of the rising scale which is part of the opening theme.

From now on the movement consists largely of transposed versions of material already heard. Re-acquaintance is made with the second subject, now in the 'home' key of C; we set our feet tapping to the 'Figaro' march; once more the whirling semiquavers lead to the chromatic 'storm', very much shortened; the long descending modulation through sundry keys catches our attention, as does the forceful repetition of the now familiar rising octave from the full orchestra. Powerful unisons in a previously unused dotted rhythm herald the arrival of the cadenza, which at the time Beethoven did not bother to write, leaving it to the inspiration of the moment.

Later he was to write no less than three cadenzas at different times, which suggests the inevitable dissatisfaction that is bound to occur when trying to graft something on to an earlier work when one's style has changed substantially with the years. What is unusual about his third cadenza (the one favoured by most pianists) is the absence of a final trill to warn the orchestra to take up their instruments again; the cadenza ends with two loud chords on the dominant seventh, a silence, a quiet and enquiring chord, an even longer silence (leaving the soloist's hands free to bring the orchestra in) and then a full version of the first six bars of the 'Figaro' march and four last allusions to the rising octave that bring the movement to a satisfying conclusion.

Unusually, piano and strings begin the slow movement together; the key is A flat whose third note, C, is imagined to be a pivot between the two scarcely related keys. The chord which is first given to the pianist is similarly spaced to the opening harmony of the Fourth Concerto, but it is a sound which Beethoven particularly associates with A flat major.¹ The Mozartean influence is particularly strong in this movement and there are some passages which could be mistaken for Mozart's, including one which is played unaccompanied in single notes, and, whether coincidentally or not, appears to be lifted out of the divine Et incarnatus est from Mozart's Mass in C minor.

The expressive initial phrases from the piano are taken still further by the orchestra before the pianist begins a decorative solo that is an exact copy of the sort of spacing we might find in a Mozart concerto; the accompaniment consists merely of occasional octaves while all our attention – and the composer's – is given to the right hand. The orchestra rather poignantly (but loudly) asserts E flat minor, before the Et incarnatus phrase is given to the piano, alternating with soft sighs on the woodwind. The elaborate phrases which ensue are for the most part decorations of the E flat major chord or its close relatives, the texture remaining essentially Mozartean.

In due course there is a return to the opening theme, this time slightly elaborated. A brief passage for orchestra culminating in some strongly rhythmic exchanges leads to yet another reprise of the theme. Surprisingly it now has a positively waltz-like accompaniment which leads at times to some fascinating clashes between the 'twos' of the melody and the 'threes' that support them.

In the closing pages of the movement Beethoven establishes the clarinet as a notable partner to the pianist, and together they initiate a memorably beautiful coda which is perhaps the best part of the whole concerto. Certainly it is the section which manages most successfully to shake off the influence of Mozart; here, one feels, is the true voice of Beethoven, speaking to us maybe in the idiom of a dying century but making it his own.

It is the soloist who sets the final Rondo on its merry way with a theme whose ending is amusingly deferred three times; as might be expected, the whole orchestra take up the theme exuberantly, helped on its course by amusingly jarring notes in the bass; a rousing fanfare on horns and woodwind expresses general satisfaction, before the soloist has an energetic little passage which includes some entertaining hops and some lively arpeggios.

The orchestra are given the first presentation of the next episode to appear:

Ex. 1d

The soloist proceeds to mock this by putting the main notes after the beat, and then, with the help of the orchestra, shifting the tonality to E flat. An amusing duet follows in which the tune is divided between a low bass and a high treble; it involves some showy crossing of the hands since the central accompanying figure buzzes along happily without interruption. It passes through several keys before settling into G major, its arrival quietly endorsed by sustained harmonies on the strings.

Next the orchestra have a brief unison interlude in which mock angry phrases are interspersed with fleeting references to the main theme, slightly modified. Taking a cue from the local farmyard (remember that Beethoven loved the country) the pianist has some typically jokey and delightful impressions of clucking hens which, once exhausted, lead us back to the initial theme, presented without changes of any kind. Again it is repeated by the full orchestra, surprisingly without alteration or new direction.

The soloist now introduces a new theme in A minor with a positively samba-like rhythm, even though it is extremely unlikely that Beethoven ever heard any Latin-American music. As if to atone for this rather frivolous tune, it is immediately followed by a somewhat academic passage of counterpoint which the woodwind are happy to copy. Beethoven appears to have been particularly taken with his 'samba', for he repeats it three times in all. He then pays a return visit to the farmyard with the hen-clucking theme.²

By now Beethoven has exhausted the material he needs for this particular movement; nearly everything is a reworking of themes we have already heard. This is not to say that he cannot still surprise us. A brief cadenza leads to a lengthy trill which diverts the music into the alien key of B major, in which new tonality the initial rondo theme now appears. For a time things seem to hang fire; then the safe return to C major, the 'home' key is greeted joyously by the full orchestra. A delightful dialogue ensues between the soloist and different sections of the woodwind; it consists of deliberately naive scales and fragments of the theme. In childlike mood, the pianist introduces a last novelty in the shape of a tune we have not heard before, then teases us with the first three notes of the rondo. For a moment the horns and oboe pretend to be serious with a sudden slowing of the tempo; then in a raucous six bars the full orchestra brings this vastly entertaining movement t...