Hess 79 – Unknown cadenza for the first version of the Concerto in B-flat major, Op. 19
Hess 79 – Unknown cadenza for the first version of the Concerto in B-flat major, Op. 19 – 1793–1796
An unknown cadenza for the first version of the Concerto in B-flat major, Op. 19. Sketches for a cadenza have been found in the Kafka Sketchbook in London (see also Nottebohm II, p. 66), as well as in the Paris Conservatoire (Beethoven Ms. 70). The complete cadenza, which was without doubt performed by Beethoven, has not survived.
[It appears that Hess’s information regarding the sources of this cadenza is incomplete, nor does he seem aware that the autograph held at the Beethoven-Haus (SBH 525) is likely a full copy of the same cadenza (see photographs). The complete cadenza forms part of the Bodmer Collection and was catalogued by Max Unger as Mh 13. Notes or sketches for this cadenza (which is in fact a single piece, not two separate ones) have been discovered in various locations. The Kafka Sketchbook provides, on pages 46 and 89, sketches for an initial version of the cadenza. These were written on paper of the same type used between 1792 and 1793. Another sketch is found on page 45 of the same miscellany, on paper datable between 1793 and 1796, which, as Kerman notes, may have been intended for a different cadenza. See the transcription published by Joseph Kerman in Autograph Miscellany from the Kafka Sketchbook ca. 1786 to 1799, British Museum, London, 1970. See also Geoffrey Block’s article 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. Of particular interest is the chronological table (pp. 123–126), which charts the sketches, continuous drafts, and autographs of this concerto.]
Hess 79 is part of the “Research Becomes Art” project.
A New Life for the Unknown Works of Ludwig van Beethoven: An Artistic Exploration by the pianist Professor Antonietta Cappelli
The Concerto in B-flat presents themes particularly dear to Beethoven. When listening to how the strings open the first movement, I’m reminded of the opening theme of the Piano Sonata Op. 10 No. 2.
I’m referring to the marziale theme that serves as a guiding thread throughout the entire cadenza. In the first section, one hears the theme from afar, interwoven with other elements.
Here we find a young and instinctive Ludwig. Short, bounding phrases, a wealth of ideas, and sonorities that reflect the Enlightenment on one hand (rhythmic clarity and precision), and pre-Romantic impulses on the other (triplets and the entire closing section).
The cadenza under examination is clearly sectional and unfolds like a fantasia. The composer offers four distinct slides. The first ends on the downbeat of bar 25, followed by a modulatory bridge leading into the second slide—filled with brilliant, technical passages that imitate each other, move in contrary motion, and resolve into an E-flat scale, also in contrary motion, which reintroduces the opening theme in bar 45, first in the bass, then echoed in all voices at the interval of a third. Then comes the third slide, from bars 55 to 68, intense and driven. The technical demands here are considerable: double dotted thirds in the right hand (repeated), and broken arpeggios in the left hand for the first four bars, with the hands then switching roles in the remainder. From bar 69 to the end, we enter the final slide, where dotted rhythms take centre stage once again, weaving dissonant sonorities above the undisturbed trill in the left hand, and eventually concluding on delicate scales in thirds and sixths.
The cadenza is technically challenging, and its interpretation even more so, given the minimal performance indications.
While playing the piece, I had the sensation that the notes were rushing towards something undefined. This feeling is not simply due to tempo, but rather to the nervous energy inherent in the dotted rhythm—it drives the melodic line forward, revealing the character of a young composer, full of dreams, who, having just arrived in Vienna, knows he must dare to stand out.
Antonietta Cappelli