Album of the Day — July 14
Ludwig van Beethoven — Piano Concerto №3
Ludwig van Beethoven — Piano Concerto №3
I’m a rock and roll guy. It’s what I like and what speaks to me. Simple guitar, bass, drums, and vocals.
Which is not to say I don’t like other things.
Piano concertos are one of those things. There is something about the sound of a piano for me.
Written by the right composer, these concertos can be soothing one minute and disruptive the next. A lot of life can be calm one minute and then suddenly turbulent — that’s been my experience of life anyway. Perhaps that’s what I like about piano concertos.
Ludwig van Beethoven’s work certainly ticks both the calm and disruptive boxes. If the movie Amadeus is any indication, it applies to his personal life as well.
At this concerto’s first performance in 1803, Beethoven was the soloist and according to the composer’s friend Ignaz von Seyfried, the score was incomplete. As von Seyfried was the page-turner that night, he later reflected:
“I saw almost nothing but empty pages; at the most, on one page or another a few Egyptian hieroglyphs wholly unintelligible to me were scribbled down to serve as clues for him; for he played nearly all the solo part from memory since, as was so often the case, he had not had time to set it all down on paper.”
Genius.
Here is Alice Sara Ott playing the Piano Concerto №3 with the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Mikko Franck from January 2018. Enjoy!