El emperador beethoven biography

It is a truism to say that Ludwig van Beethoven changed the course of music history. However, it is another matter, and a more exciting one, to hear a Beethoven composition that actually did change history.

The “Emperor” Piano Concerto is such a work.

Before Beethoven, the role of the performer was more creative than in later times. Performers were expected to improvise not only ornaments and filler passages but, in a solo concerto, also a whole cadenza (long solo near the end of the first movement).

El emperador beethoven biography

It was the performer’s job to “finish” the composition for the audience (in the same way, today, that an interior decorator finishes the work of an architect and a builder). Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto wrested that decorative privilege from the performer, who often took too much license with it anyway.

In this concerto’s first movement just before the conclu