The piano as an instrument during the 1700’s and 1800’s appeared and sounded quite different from today’s instruments. The piano progressed from using a plucked string technology to using the later approach where a felt-covered little hammer strikes the string and puts it into resonance.
Beethoven’s five piano concerti relate, in a sense, to parts of the composers life during this period. During this time, the young musician from Bonn made several revised versions of the first concerto he wrote (Ultimately being called no.2), before becoming the familiar Emperor of music embodied by the inspiration of the Concerto no. 5.
Two hundred and fifty years after his birth, it is with these two extremes that Kristian Bezuidenhout, piano, and Pablo Heras-Casado directing the Freiburger Barockorchester have chosen to start an exciting period-instrument trilogy of the concertos that commemorates these many events.
Here, for your enjoyment, is the slow movement from the Piano Concerto #5:
