Hess 14 – Concerto in B-flat major for piano and orchestra, Opus 19 (first version), 1795 (no later than mid-March)

According to current knowledge, this early version of the concerto was first performed by Beethoven in Vienna on 29 March 1795 (and likely again on 18 December, as well as on other occasions in the years immediately following). The work was later reworked in 1798 for a performance in Prague and was eventually published in December 1801 as Opus 19.

The surviving fragments from this early version are extremely limited: nineteen bars from a score copy of the first movement (corresponding, with some differences, to bars 246–269 in the second version), preserved in the archives of the Beethovenhaus and published by Hess in 1960 in the third issue, part 1, of the Supplemente zur GA; a further short score sketch in the library of the Paris Conservatoire; several sketches for a cadenza for the first movement; and a few drafts relating to all three movements, scattered across various leaves in the Kafka collection of the British Museum, briefly described by Nottebohm and Shedlock.

It is worth noting that the theme of the Rondo appears in these sketches mostly with the more orthodox accentuation, whereas in the final version the initial accentuation emerges only in the brief passage in G major before the final return of the refrain.

This is a first version [of Op. 19], composed between 1794 and 1795, and performed more than once by Beethoven in this early form, which has unfortunately not survived. See references in Thayer II, p. 85, and Max Unger in Neues Beethoven-Jahrbuch VI, Henry Litolff Verlag, Braunschweig 1935, p. 106. From this early version, the Beethoven autograph Ms. 61 from the Paris Conservatoire contains a page in full score, and Ms. 70 from the same library holds sketches for a cadenza for the first movement. Further fragments of a cadenza have been found in the so-called Kafka Sketchbook (British Museum). [The Paris Conservatoire has since transferred all its holdings to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, while the British Museum has transferred its collections to the British Library in London.] See Nottebohm II, p. 66. [In Kinsky/Halm, p. 45, this version is listed under Op. 19. The cadenza fragments mentioned above are catalogued here under number 79. Two pages from the first version were published in full score by Hess in SBG, vol. III, 1960, p. 70.]

Barry Cooper, in his essay A Long-Running Revision: Second Piano Concerto, in Beethoven and the Creative Process, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1990, describes the Second Piano Concerto as a work with a long gestation period. Nearly twenty years separate the likely date of the first autograph (dating from just before 1790) from the final stage of composition (in 1809). In this light, the notion of a simple first and second (final) version may seem too reductive.

Geoffrey Block, in his essay Some Gray Areas in the Evolution of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto in B-flat major, Op. 19, in Beethoven Essays: Studies in Honour of Elliot Forbes, edited by L. Lockwood and P. Benjamin, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1984, pp. 108–126, offers a detailed analysis of the compositional history of this concerto. Of particular interest is the chronological table (pp. 123–126) which sets out the notes, continuous sketches, and autographs relating to the concerto. The same subject is also addressed by Hans-Werner Küthen in Probleme der Chronologie in den Skizzen und Autographen zu Beethovens Klavierkonzert Op. 19, Beethoven-Jahrbuch, IX (1973–1977), pp. 263–292, Beethoven-Haus, Bonn.