Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor”

It is ironic that the last and grandest of Beethoven’s piano concertos has acquired the title “Emperor,” for we can be sure he would not have called it this himself. The nickname is used exclusively in English-speaking countries and we don’t really know when or why it came into use. The irony comes from Beethoven’s fury on hearing that Napoleon had crowned himself Emperor, betraying the higher ideals of universal brotherhood and liberty that Beethoven so strongly believed in. Emperors, in Beethoven’s experience, were not to be admired. Nevertheless, the title is unarguably appropriate, at least for the grandeur that differentiates this concerto from its siblings. 

Beethoven had already composed a piano concerto in E-flat major in his youth, a work that could be classified as his “Concerto No. 0” in a canon of six (or seven if we want to also include the arrangement for solo piano of the Violin Concerto). However, a great gulf of almost 25 years separates that early work from the “Emperor” Concerto, and a three-year gap separates the “Emperor,” composed in 1809, from the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Violin Concerto, both finished in 1806. 

The composer never played this last concerto himself in public. By the time of its premiere, his deafness made coordination with the orchestra too difficult. His last public appearance as a pianist was in the solo piano part in the Choral Fantasy in 1808, a work which nevertheless seems to have helped prompt him to embark on this his last concerto. 

As in his Choral Fantasy, Beethoven commences the “Emperor” Concerto with a resplendent cadenza displaying scales, arpeggios, trills, octaves, and all the armory of the virtuoso pianist, but no actual musical themes. Beethoven writes an enormously long first movement — by allowing both orchestra and soloist to work their way through a full exposition each, and by allowing his themes (once introduced) to expand freely and his keys to range in all directions. 

The first theme is a strong statement, unmistakably positive and muscular, but the second, first heard in the minor in hesitant fragments and then in the major on a pair of horns, seems much emptier. Yet for Beethoven, this kind of theme is not plain. Rather, it was exactly the kind of challenge he needed, for his ingenuity and imagination. 

For the slow second movement, the key moves to the remote landscape of B major — a key rarely explored in Beethoven’s era — and the solemn hymnlike tones of the strings’ opening pervade the movement, a high point of serenity. Beethoven makes special capital out of the top octave on the piano, a novelty that could be found on only the latest pianos of his day. Delicate piano arpeggios accompany the winds’ statement of the theme. 

The music eventually comes to rest, for with the plain intention of welding his musical thinking into a larger unified sequence, Beethoven repeats the effect so well managed in the Triple Concerto and the Fifth Symphony, with the music running — here, perhaps leaping! — directly into the third movement. In this transition, he goes a step further than those earlier works and actually traces the outline of the coming Rondo theme while the mood of the Adagio is still hanging in the air. The foreshadowing is superbly calculated and effective. 

With its high trills and striding left-hand figures, the finale bursts with vigor and energy. There is not much room for harmonic subtlety, least of all in the theme itself, but the vital aim of generating a new source of musical energy is amply achieved. The idea of a piano concerto was thereafter never the same again. The Romantic era had truly arrived, earnest and strong. 

— Hugh Macdonald