# Beethoven - Op. 58 - Piano concerto No. 4



## HansZimmer (11 mo ago)

How do you rate this piece? Here below you find a recording with Glenn Gould as pianist, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and Leonard Bernstein as conductor. You can suggest better recordings, if you want.

I also want to encourage the users who are able to analyze music to write some details about the structure of each movement, so that in this kind of threads the users can read interesting details about the piece.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Obviously lots of musicians have had a very good shot at making sense of this music, and there are many many fine and stimulating performances you can easily hear.

However there's one which really rethinks it from scratch, and sounds like no other. IMO it's something anyone who takes the music seriously should at least hear, though possibly only after they have cleared their minds of all other renditions.

I'm talking about Fou Ts'Ong

傅聰【Beethoven：Piano Concerto No.4 In G Major, Op.58 I . Allegro Moderato】Official Instrumental - YouTube


The central movement was traditionally given an exotic narrative background story by romantics that way inclined, often from mythology. I forget them all now, but it could be amusing to come up with one. It is certainly an interesting movement . Musicologists -- is it without precedent?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Here's a good live one

Mikhail Pletnev plays Beethoven - Piano Concerto No. 4 (Moscow, 2006) - YouTube


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## Montarsolo (5 mo ago)

_The video with Wilhelm Backhaus and Karl Bőhm! Backhaus is 80+. No ego, pure sound. 





_


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## marlow (11 mo ago)

GG is certainly a very interesting interpretation. Kempff is marvellous though.


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## HansZimmer (11 mo ago)

8 votes on 11 (including mine) rate this piece as "excellent". In 35 minutes of music there isn't any single note that I would change.


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## Monsalvat (11 mo ago)

I like Alfred Brendel with Simon Rattle and the Vienna Philharmonic, and Leon Fleisher with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. Voted for "excellent." Oh, and Kempff/Leitner is another set I often reach for (for the Beethoven piano concertos in general).


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Perahia is almost unbeatable in this piece, I voted very good because 3 and 5 are my dessert island disc .


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

I find this the only Beethoven piano concerto that does not wear me down over time. I like an old periold performance recording from Badura-Skoda linked to the Triple Concerto.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> The central movement was traditionally given an exotic narrative background story by romantics that way inclined, often from mythology. I forget them all now, but it could be amusing to come up with one. It is certainly an interesting movement . Musicologists -- is it without precedent?


The most interesting myth-based interpretation I've read is by Owen Jander.* He suggests that the string recitatives are the Furies denying Orpheus entry to the Underworld and the piano is Orpheus attempting to placate and persuade them with his harp. It's a simple idea that neatly captures the movement's striking textural opposition and its progress, because in Beethoven, as in the myth, the Furies are gradually subdued or enthralled as the harp of Orpheus sings ever more eloquently and persuasively. It's been a long time since I've read the article but I remember thinking Jander made a credible case.

Unprecedented? There's nothing else like it in one sense ( I mean the "Wow, that's strange" sense) although its mystery, rhapsodic quality, and direct link to the finale have the precedent of the Waldstein Sonata, Op. 53, composed a few years earlier.

*Jander, Owen. “Beethoven’s ‘Orpheus in Hades’: The _Andante con moto_ of the Fourth Piano Concerto.” _19th-Century Music_ 8 (1985): 195-212.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

The Orpheus idea must have been around since the 19th century. I remember it with wild animals but the furies are probably more apt. 
I love the concerto (my favorite Beethoven concerto and one of my favorite concertos ever) but I am not _that_ fond of the middle movement although it is quite unique, despite some recitative-like (and/or short) slow movements in earlier works (Haydn's quartet op.54/2 is one example).
The restriction to strings in a work otherwise scored for full orchestra also seems unique in Beethoven (or even late Mozart and Haydn, earlier 1760s-70s pieces will often have only strings in a slow movement).


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Here's Owen Jander's article, which I shall read this weekend






Beethoven's "Orpheus in Hades": The "Andante con moto" of the Fourth Piano Concerto on JSTOR


Owen Jander, Beethoven's "Orpheus in Hades": The "Andante con moto" of the Fourth Piano Concerto, 19th-Century Music, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Spring, 1985), pp. 195-212




www.jstor.org


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