Concerto no. 3 for piano and orchestra (C minor) op. 37
Listening samples
Dedication
Composition
Initial sketches 1796 (perhaps early not completed version), part of the score completed in 1799-1800, first edition 1804
From January 1803 to May 1804 Beethoven lived in service accommodation at the Theater an der Wien, for which he was writing an opera. (His first choice, Vesta's Fire, seemed unconvincing and he abandoned it for Leonore.) In the first spring of his stay at the theatre he was offered the auditorium to hold a concert on 5 April 1803 featuring the premières of his Second Symphony, the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives and the Third Piano Concerto.
It took Beethoven years to finish his Third Piano Concerto. He originally intended to play it at his first academy on 2 April 1800, only to stop work on it and perform an earlier concerto instead. He then resumed work on it for a performance scheduled at the Hofburgtheater during an academy of the Tonkünstler Society in April 1802. When this event was cancelled, he stopped work on the concerto again and only completed it before the academy the following year. As the oratorio and the concerto were to be premièred at once, he had little time to write out the new piece. The orchestral parts were finished, but not the solo part, which he partly improvised during the concert. It was not until one year later, when his pupil Ferdinand Ries played the concerto in public, that Beethoven completed the piano part. (J.R.)
