Concerto

It was Clementi, in his guise as a London music publisher, who commissioned Beethoven to transform his famous violin concerto into a piano concerto.

The transcription has been much maligned, and it’s true that it’s often rather workmanlike; but there’s no shortage of imaginative touches, and the wild and wacky cadenzas (Beethoven left none for the violin version) have to be heard to be believed. The talented Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan finds much poetry in the piece, and only out and out purists are likely to worry about him supplying one or two notes right at the top of the keyboard which weren’t available to Beethoven in 1807 (though already by the time he wrote his cadenzas a couple of years later he was able to avail himself of the missing notes).

The is another work that sometimes gets a bad press, but more than just a dry-run for the last movement of the Ninth Symphony it’s a fascinating amalgam of improvisation, variations, concerto and cantata. The piece is very well handled