Work composed: 1805-06. Dedicated to Beethoven’s patron, friend, and pupil, Archduke Rudolph of Austria
World premiere: First performed in March 1807 at a private concert at the palace of Prince Lobkowitz in Vienna. The public premiere took place on December 22, 1808, as part of an all-Beethoven benefit program at the Theater an der Wien, with the composer at the piano.
Instrumentation: solo piano, flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings.

Estimated duration: 34 minutes

Imagine settling into your seat in the Theater an der Wien on a cold December night in 1808. You are there for the premiere of Ludwig van Beethoven’s latest piano concerto, and although you have come to expect the unexpected from Beethoven, you are fairly certain what you will hear: a standard piano concerto format, consisting of three movements with clearly defined key relationships. The soloist will play brilliantly, especially in the cadences, and the concerto will end triumphantly.

When Beethoven takes his seat at the piano, all your preconceptions are shattered. He begins to play. Unaccompanied. At first you wonder if he is simply warming up (the hall is miserably chilly), but when the orchestra enters, in a completely unexpected key, you realize you are witnessing something unprecedented: a total reinvention of the piano concerto as a genre.

So begins Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, arguably the most innovative of the five he wrote. With this work, Beethoven challenged himself to re-imagine all of the piano concerto’s standard conventions, from harmony to form to the role of the soloist. “With Beethoven … there is a sense of striving for diverse solutions to each problem,” notes biographer Maynard Solomon.  “Each of Beethoven’s works from c. 1802 onward has a strikingly individual character. In a deepening of the trend which began in 1806 with the Fourth Symphony, the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Violin Concerto, he now seemed to imbue many of his works with a sense of inner repose that no longer required turbulent responses to grand challenges.”

Beethoven’s self-confidence reveals itself in surprisingly intimate writing, particularly for the piano. The Allegro moderato begins softly, and Beethoven maintains the calm, resolute quality of the solo part throughout most of the Andante as well; there is none of the bold, brash “Look at me!” quality of the Third and Fifth Symphonies. The Andante slides into the Rondo without pause, blurring the usually clearly delineated three-movement structure. Expectations are further confounded when the Rondo begins with the orchestra, rather than the soloist, and in the “wrong” key besides. Eventually Beethoven gives us a bravura energetic finale.

The Fourth Piano Concerto premiered with several other works, including both Beethoven’s Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, and the Choral Fantasy. In addition, listeners heard the concert aria “Ah, perfido,” and the “Gloria” and “Sanctus” from the Mass in C major. The four-hour concert challenged the endurance of even the most ardent Beethoven fans. To make matters worse, the orchestra was badly under-rehearsed and the hall poorly heated. Composer Johann Friedrich Reichardt, who attended the premiere, later wrote, “There we sat from 6:30 till 10:30, in the most bitter cold, and found by experience that one might have too much even of a good thing.”