Luogo e data di registrazione		Kloster Benediktbeuern /Germany) - 12/14 September 1996
	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 62 824 - (1 CD) - durata 69' 09" - (p) 1997 - DDD
	Cover Art		Der Michaelplatz gegen die K. K. Reitschule (1783) by Carl Schütz (1745-1800), Vienna, Historisches Museum
	Note		-

Beethoven was often rather off-hand about his earlier works. Offering the new C-minor Concerto (No. 3, Op. 37) to Breitkopf & Härtel, he spoke rather disparagingly about the two earlier works. While he perhaps deliberately exaggerated the situation for commercial reasons, there is no doubt that the “out-Mozarting" trend here reaches its height. The model was, quite obviously, Mozart`s great and stirring Concerto in C minor, K. 491, which we know Beethoven much admired. (“Ah, Cramer," he said to the visiting British pianist when both were listening to the end of K. 491, "we'll never be able to do anything like that.”) In a sense, Beethoven does push the gaunt and yet (in the slow movement) tenderly loving music of K. 491 a step further in Op. 37. It was the culmination of his efforts to be an over-life-size Haydn and Mozart combined. This concerto has (or rather, had) a chronological problem. It was maintained before the Second World War, and even later, that the autograph manuscript (now in the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Berlin) was dated “Concerto 1800 Da L. v. Beethoven,” and it was described as such in the definitive catalog of Beethoven's music, Das Werk Beethovens: Thematisch bibliographisches Verzeíchnís seiner sämtlichen vollendeten Kompositíonen, by Georg Kinsky (Henle Verlag, Munich 1955, p. 92). But this manuscript was then lost: it had in fact been evacuated for safe-keeping during the Second World War from Berlin to a monastery at Grüssau in Silesia (now Krzeszów in Poland) and, after a series of adventures, was finally returned to the Berlin Library in 1977. And great was everyoneßs astonishment when, upon examination, it was seen that the date on the manuscript was not 1800 but 1803. Previously it had been assumed that Beethoven first performed the work at the benefit concert which the composer gave in the Vienna Burgtheater in April 1800. But this could now no longer be maintained, since the work was not completed until three years later; indeed, according to the manuscript's watermarks, the autograph might even date from slightly before 1803.And the whole problem is rendered more complicated by the arrival of a new piano from Paris. The Third Concerto was possibly begun in 1800, probably shortly before the April benefit concert, but not completed until 1803, after the arrival of a new Erard pianoforte from Paris. (This firm delivered one to Beethoven and one to Prince Lichnowsky - both have survived.) The technical innovations and the enlarged keyboard of the new Erard were immediately utilized in the C minor Concerto, the first performance of which was at the concert of April 5, 1803, which featured the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives and the Second Symphony. The following year Beethovenßs pupil Ferdinand Ries played the concerto with the composer conducting. The Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung thought that Op. 37 “without doubt belongs among Beethoven's most beautiful compositions. It is worked out in a masterly fashion” With the Fourth Concerto in G major, Op. 58, we move into a world far removed from that of the first three: if the spirit of Mozart hovered over the earlier concertos, with No. 4 we are in the middle of Beethovenßs own spiritual domain: tender, poetic, forceful, humnrous. For many people this is the most perfect, most personal, most tender of all Beethoven's piano concertos. Like Mozart's K. 271, the piano opens the work all by itself, and the orchestra reveals itself coyly, like a young maiden, until we realize that it is indeed a grand orchestra, even to trumpets and drums, which, dramatically, do not enter until the finale. The rhapsodic slow movement is in the great tradition of an instrument pretending to be a human voice - the recitatívo accompagnato that was to figure so effectively in the Ninth Symphony's finale. The first public performance of the Fourth Concerto took place, with Beethoven as soloist, at a concert in the Theater an der Wien on December 22, 1808, which also included the premières of the Fifth and“Pastoral” Symphonies and the Choral Fantasia. We have two horrendous descriptions of this catastrophic concert, one by Ferdinand Ries and one by the German composer and writer on music Johann Friedrich Reichardt. “Beethoven gave [writes Ries] a large concert in the Theater an der Wien, at which were performed for the first time the C minor and "Pastoral" [...] Symphonies as well as his Fantasia for Piano with orchestra and chorus. In this last work, at the place where the last beguiling theme appears already in a varied form, the clarinet player made, by mistake, a repeat of eight bars. Since only a few instruments were playing, this error was all the more evident to the ear. Beethoven leapt up in a fury, turned around and abused the orchestral players in the coarsest terms and so loudly that he could be heard throughout the auditorium. Finally, he shouted,`From the beginning!' The theme began again, everyone came in properly, and the success was great. But when the concert was finished, the artists, remembering only too well the honorable titles which Beethoven had bestowed on them in public, fell into a great rage, as if the offense had just occurred. They swore that they would never play again if Beethoven were in the orchestra, and so forth. This went on until Beethoven had composed something new, and then their curiosity got the better of their anger [...].” “During the past week, [writes Reichardt] when the theatres were closed and the evenings were taken up with musical performances and concerts, my eagerness and resolution to hear everything caused me no small embarrassment. This was particularly the case on the 22nd, because the local musicians gave the first of the season's great musical performances in the Burgtheater for the benefit of their admirable Society for Musicians` Widows; on the same day, however, Beethoven also gave a concert for his own benefit in the large suburban theatre, consisting entirely of his own compositions. I could not possibly miss this and at midday accepted with heartfelt gratitude Prince Lobkowitz's kind invitation to take me with him in his box. There we held out in the bitterest cold from half past six until half past ten, and experienced the fact that one can easily have too much of a good - and even more of a strong - thing. I, no more than the extremely kindly and gentle Prince, whose box was in the first tier very near to the stage, on which the orchestra, with Beethoven conducting, were quite close to us, would ever have thought of leaving the box before the very end of the concert, although several faulty performances tried our patience to the utmost. Poor Beethoven, for whom this concert provided the first and only genuine profit that he had been able to earn and retain during this whole year, had encountered a great deal of opposition and very little support both in its organization and performance. The singers and the orchestra were assembled from very heterogeneous elements. Moreover, it had not even been possible to arrange a complete rehearsal of all the pieces to be performed, every one of which was filled with passages of the utniost difficulty. You will be amazed [to hear that] all this was performed by this fertile genius and untiring worker in the course of four hours." © 1997 H.C. Robbins Landon