Klavierkonzert Nr. 4 G-Dur op. 58 - 8. Teil

The Theater an der Wien was opened in 1801. In the early part of the 19th century it served as a concert venue, including for a recital given by Beethoven on 22 December 1808. The programme included the first public performance of his Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, op. 58. The concerto had been composed in 1805 and 1806, but its only previous performance had been for an exclusive audience at the palace belonging to his patron Prince Franz Joseph Lobkowitz. The piece is especially notable for being the first of Beethoven’s concertos to incorporate symphonic elements.

The concerto was a particularly significant work in the career of the German pianist Wilhelm Backhaus (1884–1969); his interpretation of it in his first concert outside his hometown, in Darmstadt in 1899, was a major success. In the course of his extensive career, Backhaus established a reputation as an outstanding interpreter of Beethoven in particular. He wrote a long cadenza of his own for the third movement of the Concerto in G major, which begins cheerfully before giving way to a frenzied rondo driven by timpani and trumpets, and this cadenza appears at the beginning of the excerpt reproduced here. After a final variation of the rondo theme, the concerto concludes with an artful stretta. This recording was made in 1951 with the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Clemens Krauss (1893–1954). Kraus was the orchestra’s last permanent subscription conductor (from 1930 to 1933) and it was he who began the tradition of the New Year's Concert, in 1939.
(Constanze Köhn)