Program Notes: Bravo! Beethoven!
Piano Concerto No3. In A Major Beethoven considered this work the best of his first three piano concertos, a judgment still maintained today. Yet its premiere in Vienna on April 5, 1803, was hardly auspicious. It marked Beethoven’s first public failure as performer and composer. The music was not appreciated, and his playing of the solo part was criticized, perhaps understandably in light of the situation described by Beethoven’s friend Ignaz von Seyfried, who turned pages: “