Luogo e data di registrazione		Kurhaus Bad Tölz /Germany) - 28/30 August 1995
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Recording supervisor		Wolf Erichson
	Recording Engineer		Stephan Schellmann (Tritonus)
	Tape Editor / Mastering		Stephan Schellmann
	Prima Edizione LP		-
	Prima Edizione CD		Sony / Vivarte - SK 68 250 - (1 CD) - durata 61' 47" - (p) 1996 - DDD
	Cover Art		Carl Schütz, Der Michaelplatz gegen die K. K. Reitschule (1783), Vienna, Historisches Museum
	Note		-

In the autumn of 1792 Ludwig van Beethoven left Bonn to study with Joseph Haydn in Vienna. Haydn gave his new pupil lessons in counterpoint but also introduced him to many potential patrons. It was also intended that Beethoven should accompany Haydn on the latter's second visit in England, but the progress of the war with France caused Haydn to postpone his trip, and by the time he actually left Vienna in January 1794, Beethoven had made such a mark on Viennese society that he decided to remain in the Austrian capital. By this time, Beethoven's prowess as a piano player had made him more famous in Vienna than as a composer, and when he finally made his first appearance there, it was at a concert given by one of his patrons, Prince Lobkowitz, on March 2, 1795. A contemporary diarist wrote: “De la au Concert du Pce Lobkowitz, ou un nomé Bethofen de Bonn fit tous sentir” (roughly: made everyone sit up and listen). As a matter of historical coincidence, it was also the evening when, in faraway England, Haydn was conducting the world première of his “Drumroll” Symphony No. 103. A few weeks later, on March 29, 1795, Beethoven performed at the celebrated Tonkünstler-Societät in the Burgtheater; the occasion was Gioas, re di Giuda, an oratorio by Antonio Cartellieri, in the interval of which Beethoven performed a new piano concerto. The Wiener Zeitung of Apríl 1 reported that this new concerto had been “received with unanimous applause by the public”. This is the first known announcement of any known piano concerto by Beethoven, and with it begins a long and as yet unsolved series of speculations as to the chronology of the two Concertos Opp. 15 and 19. (In those days, the keys of such works were hardly ever listed, so we are obliged to look elsewhere for evidence.) It is now known that Beethoven began to compose the B flat Concerto while still in Bonn, because there exists a page with watermarks of the Bonn period, c. 1790. There are also two different finales to Op. 19, of which the first, chronologically, is the Rondo for piano and orchestra (WoO 6), later discarded. It used to be assumed that the Tonkünstler concert was the première of the final version with the concluding movement as we now know it, but recently it has been suggested that it was the C major Concerto Op. 15 that was given on March 29, 1795, although the evidence for the latter is tenuous in the extreme. After studying all the sources, the unbiased observer can propose only the following table: Concerto in B flat Op. 19: begun in Bonn in or slightly before 1790, using WoO 6 as finale; revised thoroughly after 1793; performed several times in Vienna at various concerts; again revised and with a new finale added when prepared for publication in December 1801 by E A. Hoffmeister & Comp.,Vienna, and Bureau de Musique, Leipzig, and dedicated to Charles Nikl, a member of the Austrian Government. Concerto in C, Op. 15: composed in Vienna in the 1790s. There is no certain concert, either in Vienna or in the other places where the composer played in this period (Pressburg, Prague, Budapest), at which the first performance can be established. It has recently been suggested that it was the work performed at Beethoven's benefit concert at the Burgtheater on April 2, 1800 rather than the Concerto in C minor Op. 37, the autograph of which is dated not 1800, as we previously stated, but 1803. The C major Concerto was published by T. Mollo et Comp., Vienna, Comptoir d'Industrie, Leipzig, and by Gayl et Hedler, Frankfurt, March 1801, and dedicated to Anna Luise Barbara, Princess d`Erba-Odescalchi. As it happened, Op. 15 was published before Op. 19. There is an interesting and widely quoted letter from Beethoven to his friend and publisher F. A. Hoffmeister in Leipzig, dated December 15, 1800, in which we read among the various works on offer: “3. A concerto for pianoforte, which I do not claim to be one of my best [Op. 19], as well as another one [Op. 15], which will be published here by Mollo, [...] because I am for the present keeping the better ones for myself until I make a tour. However, it would not disgrace you to publish it. ”This would seem to indicate that, contrary to the autograph dating, Concerto No. 3 in C minor Op. 37 was also written by December 1800, otherwise why write“keeping the better ones” if, apart from Op. 19, there was only Op. 15 in the accounting? Beethoven was often highly critical of his own œuvre and Op. 19 is a better work than he allows. It is of course heavily indebted to Mozart and especially to his B flat Concertos K. 450 and K. 456 (which, though not yet published in 1790, may have been known to Beethoven during his Vienna trip in 1787), but there is one significant difference: Mozart`s works have piercingly high B flat alto horns, a Viennese speciality, whereas Beethoven's Op. 19 has B flat basso horns, such as would have been known in Bonn. It is probable that after ten years of revision Beethoven had grown tired of this concerto. But Op. 19 is a worthy successor to the Mozartian corpus, with its delicate balance between robust themes (like the finale's) and the subtle and beautiful passage-work of the slow movement. Op. 15 leans even more heavily on Mozart and on the grand C major style as we know it in three major examples, K. 415 (second version), K. 467 and K. 503. Trumpets and timpani were always regarded as special events and were often specially advertised (“une Symphonie avec trompettes et timbales”), and this is an aspect of Mozart's scoring that made a direct appeal to young Beethoven. We find it in this period not only here but in the First Symphony and the underrated ballet music Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus. In fact, Beethoven's sometimes massive use of trumpets and timpani soon reveals his own particular style, as does the rhapsodic slow movement in a characteristic third†related key (A flat). Beethoven”s piano parts were - like Mozart's in his concertos - originally sketchy simply because he was used to playing them himself. Hence there are no cadenzas for the 1790 version of these works, composed for pianos with five octaves and a top note of f'". Beethoven's later cadenzas (and he wrote no fewer than three for the C major Concerto and one for the Op. 19) were all for a piano with a bigger range than the five-octave instrument and presumably intended for a pupil such as Archduke Rudolph. Therefore, for this recording, they have been improvised as they would have been in the 1790s. © 1996 H.C. Robbins Landon