LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN‘s first two piano concertos were written in reverse order between 1795 and 1800. Piano Concerto No. 2 was actually his first attempt at a concerto. It was completed around 1798, with some manuscripts dating back to 1790 and 1785 when Beethoven was just 15 years old. Regarding this stage in his professional career, the composer said: ‘I live entirely in my music. I have barely finished one composition before I start a new one. At my current pace, I often work on three or four pieces simultaneously.”

Until he was almost 30 years old, his music showed the influence of his time and his idols. The influence of Mozart and Haydn is particularly evident in his first two piano concertos and his Symphony No. 1. His chamber music, which excludes timpani and trumpets, is also impressive. This demonstrates that Beethoven had mastered the Viennese musical tradition and incorporated it into his own style. Despite its many charms, the Second Concerto does not embody the completeness and naturalness of Mozart’s later concertos.

The first performance of the Concerto in B-flat major took place at a charity concert in the Burgtheater in March 1795. This was one of the 24-year-old composer-pianist’s earliest public appearances in the imperial capital of Vienna. According to the Wiener Zeitung, the performance received “unanimous applause”, and the young musician “had the honour” of performing the concerto again under the direction of “the esteemed Haydn”.

Despite its success, Beethoven postponed the publication of the work, only completing the solo part at the end of 1800. The Concerto in B-flat major, however, was the first orchestral work that the composer considered suitable for publication. In 1801, he therefore submitted it to the Viennese publisher Hoffmeister. To forestall any criticism, the composer cautiously informed the publisher: ‘I do not consider it to be among my best works.’ He therefore offered it at half the price of his Symphony No. 1.

In fact, Beethoven composed the concerto specifically for his piano concert repertoire, as he was renowned in the 1790s as a performer and improviser rather than a composer.

When he decided to write a completely new third movement, his friend Wegeler reported that the composer wrote the rondo in the afternoon of the second day before the concert, while suffering from severe colic, a condition that troubled him frequently. Four copyists were sitting in the antechamber, to whom Beethoven handed sheet after sheet as soon as they were finished. At the first rehearsal, Beethoven also discovered that his piano was tuned a semitone lower than the wind instruments, so he transposed his solo part.

Beethoven, a great improviser, composed the cadenza for the first movement during the premiere itself. The cadenza we have today was created much later, in 1809, when Beethoven’s style had become much more vivid.