Concert Season presented by

Series presented by

Concert Sponsors

Tiemens Private Wealth Management Group of Wells Fargo Advisors

Robert D. Lee and Susan A. Ashley

DpiX

Concert Co-Sponsor

Richard and Sandra Hilt

Welkin Sciences, LLC

Guest Artist Sponsors

Lewis and Karen Clark

Barbara and Don Gazibara

Nancy Hochman in memory of Bill Hochman

Helen and Bill Holmgren

Saturday, March 12 at 7:30pm
Sunday, March 13 at 2:30pm

Josep Caballé-Domenech Conductor

Jorge Federico Osorio Piano

BEETHOVEN 
Piano Concerto No. 3

1. Allegro con brio (fast with vigor)
2. Largo (rather slow; stately)
3. Rondo Allegro (fast in rondo form) 

INTERMISSION

BEETHOVEN 
Piano Concerto No. 5 “Emperor”

1. Allegro (fast)
2. Adagio (slowly)
3. Rondo Allegro (fast in rondo form) 

Hearing these two concertos back to back in one performance allows us to appreciate exactly how much Ludwig van Beethoven shaped and permanently changed the genre of the piano concerto. 

Keyboard concertos had been around since the late Baroque period, some 80 years earlier. Mozart, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, and other composers of the Classical period wrote dozens of them. Beethoven was especially inspired by Mozart’s later concertos, particularly the dramatic and emotive elements Mozart employed in his second movements (the second movement of a typical piano concerto of this time, with its slow tempo and freer form, allowed for the composer to express more individuality), in contrast to the stricter formats and faster tempos of the outer movements.

Beethoven’s affinity for rhythm gives all his music, but particularly the concertos, all of which he initially conceived as vehicles for himself to perform, particular vibrancy, even a kind of defiant energy. Given Beethoven’s hearing loss, which occurred gradually over two decades, it is no surprise that he connected most viscerally to rhythmic themes, which he could perceive through vibrations (the story about Beethoven cutting the legs of his piano so he could feel the vibrations through the floor as he played has been debunked by music historians in recent years, however). 

With these and other musical innovations, Beethoven essentially declared the composer’s artistic imperative to make music that reflects the personal rather than the general, in a celebration of humanity’s gloriously variable and unique possibilities.