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Rating: There has always been a very strong connection between me and this Beethovenian concert, a concert capable of touching the soul more than the Emperor or the more renowned works of the German composer. Maybe it's due to its "romantic" aura (in the most literary sense of the term), maybe it's due to that pathos that each note manages to emanate (the third is the only Beethoven concert to use a minor key), or maybe it's the almost unconscious comparison that comes to my mind with each listen between this concert and the K.466 concert, Mozart's "pre-romantic," with which it shares many points in common.
The work opens with the 14 plus minutes of "Allegro con brio", one of the most complex pages devised by the musician from Bonn, where a solemn first theme in a minor mode clashes with a more cantabile second theme, never showing any traces of discontinuity, never giving way to misplaced dissonances. The classical theme exposition of the sonata form is entrusted to the orchestra alone (a rather unusual characteristic for a concert of the time), which then, with a crescendo, gives way to an aggressive and determined piano, from now on the true protagonist of the concert. The soloist sweeps up the themes previously introduced by the orchestra, expands them, develops them in a whirlwind of notes in which the rest of the orchestra can only stand aside, in a continuous crescendo up to a whirlwind cadence, a moment of absolute virtuosity that leaves one speechless. Then the tones calm, the piano finds itself alone conversing with the timpani (a classic of Beethoven's concerts, a technique that will return in the Emperor as well). But it is only a moment, before the disconcerting finale in which the orchestra returns to the forefront, reprising the first theme in an even more aggressive manner.
A completely different atmosphere is breathed in the "Largo", one of the best pages ever by the German composer. The piano enters in a delicate manner that could even make the best Chopin envious, proposing a very simple melody that seems to float ethereally among the 88 keys before being taken by the hand and lifted by the orchestra, in a continuous dialogue between the strings and the winds. The piano returns, this time hinting at a new theme, a light melody with a slight waltz tempo, and the orchestra returns again to support it, to accompany it, never taking over, never taking away the role of protagonist from the solo instrument. Just enough time to let this new refrain penetrate the soul and then the keyboard draws an arabesque of notes on which the soft melodies of the winds seem to float, and the initial theme returns in all its sweetness. The piano hints at it, plays with it, always supported by an orchestra that is never too pretentious, until it reaches a cadence with totally different tones from the previous one, a delicate cadence that thus seals one of the highest moments in the history of music.
The finale is left to a "Rondo" with a typically classical form, almost a tribute from Beethoven to Mozart and the entire pre-romantic music. The complexity of this movement is almost astonishing, the way each theme emerges from the score only to fade and give way again to the main motif still amazes 200 years after the writing of this page. And what leaves one even more speechless is the continuous alternation between themes in minor and major modes, an alternation that never seems forced or out of place, but seems almost the most "natural" way to generate the rondo. And it is precisely an unexpected major key that peeks in at the end of the movement, closing in an open and luminous way one of the highest pages of the genius of Bonn.
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