Piano Concerto No. 6 (Beethoven)

This article is about unfinished concerto by Beethoven. Not to be confused with Violin Concerto arranged as a Piano Concerto (Beethoven).

Piano Concerto No. 6 in D major, Hess 15, is an unfinished piano concerto by German composer Ludwig van Beethoven. It is not to be confused with the transcription by the composer for piano and orchestra of the Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61, which is sometimes referred to as the 6th Piano Concerto.

Description

Beethoven spent a great deal of time on the concerto in estimated late 1814 and early 1815.[1] He made about seventy pages of sketches for the first movement, and even started writing out a full score (MS Artaria 184 in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin), which runs almost uninterrupted from the beginning of the movement to the middle of the solo exposition (bar 182), although the scoring becomes patchy as the work proceeds and there are signs of indecision or dissatisfaction on the composer's part. This partial movement (known as Hess 15)[1] remains one of the most substantial of Beethoven's unrealized conceptions.[2]

A completion of the first movement was reconstructed by British scholar Nicholas Cook in 1987.[3]

References

  1. ^ a b Douglas Porter Johnson, Alan Tyson, Robert Winter (1985). The Beethoven Sketchbooks: History, Reconstruction, Inventory at Google Books, University of California Press. pp. 234, 242–244, 342 ISBN 9780520048355
  2. ^ Nicholas Cook. "Piano Concerto No. 6 in D, Hess 15 (1815) First movement, Performing edition by Prof. Nicholas Cook". The Unheard Beethoven.
  3. ^ Beethoven unfinished Concerto for Piano D major, No. 6 (1815) on YouTube

Further reading

  • RISM 464000285 Description of Brief Sketch at the Staatsbibliothek
  • RISM 464001322 Condensed Description of all the Existing Sketches for Concerto 6 at the Staatsbibliothek