Ludwig van Beethoven -- Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major -- Score

Beethoven's fifth and final piano concerto is frequently given the name "Emperor". The origins of this name are confused and unclear, as the piece was dedicated not to an Emperor, but an Archduke. Rudolf of Austria was a patron of Beethoven, joining with other Viennese nobility to offer Beethoven a pension to keep him in the city, when Jérôme Bonaparte sought to hire him away. Though the Napoleonic Wars caused disruption that led to Beethoven going unpaid (to the extent he had to get the courts to intervene), Rudolf became his student in piano and composition, and ultimately a good friend. Beethoven dedicated multiple compositions to Archduke Rudolf, including this one. In fact, Beethoven developed a distinct hatred of Napoleon, despite the aforementioned job offer from his brother, newly installed as King of Westphalia. He originally sympathized with Napoleon's efforts to tamp down the chaos of the French Revolution, and even originally dedicated the Eroica Symphony to him. After Napoleon declared himself Emperor and declared war on most of Europe, he scratched out the title page with such violence that he tore through the paper. The Fifth Concerto was written during the Siege of Vienna, when Beethoven attempted to protect his already-declining hearing from French cannon fire by binding his head with pillows and hiding in a cellar. The performance here is also something of an oddity...and one could say the performer was an oddity himself. Glenn Gould rarely performed in public, only some 200 concerts in his career, and stopped giving concerts entirely in 1964. He did not perform the modern Romantic performers commonly played by virtuosi, such as Rachmaninoff, Chopin, or Liszt, preferring instead Baroque and Classical composers; Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and most notably Bach. He came to prefer performing in studio, where he could have complete control and edit the final product to his satisfaction (the trained ear can detect a few technical errors in this concert broadcast, but nothing that detracts from the overall performance). One can also see the unorthodox technique that nonetheless worked so well to express Bach's contrapuntal writing. 0:00 Allegro 19:19 Adagio un poco mosso 26:51 Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo Video source:    • Glenn Gould - Beethoven, Concerto No. 5 in...      • Glenn Gould - Beethoven, Concerto No. 5 in...   Score sourced through the International Music Score Library Project / Petrucci Music Library: https://imslp.org/wiki/Special:Imagef... This video is produced for educational purposes, for the benefit of amateurs, enthusiasts, and professional musicians alike. No claim of ownership is made over the component parts of this video. SMW is always happy to take suggestions for upcoming videos.