Soundtracks:
Dead Poet's Society
Colonel Chabert
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Fearless
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Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major, Opus 73,
"Emperor"
The
year 1809 was a hard year in Vienna that had surrendered to Napoleon's
army after being heavily bombed. There was a great shortage of money, food
and commodities. Beethoven, who wrote his Piano Concerto No. 5, at the
time, dedicated it to the Prince Rudolph of Austria. Like his 3rd Symphony,
"The Heroic", this concerto also has a warlike character, and
it ends with a victory. In spite of the obvious hardship he felt during
the siege and the terrible bombings, he kept faith and transmitted his
optimistic spirit to the concerto. Beethoven, who stayed trapped in Vienna
and had a hard time going out for the countryside vacations he loved so
much, and during which he created such wonderful music, sailed to other
places in his imagination, places where only good wins.
The concerto opens with a solo playing of the pianist, and a militant,
brave first movement on account of which this piece gained its nickname
"The Emperor" (as in the "Moonlight Sonata", Beethoven
was not the one who titled it). The second movement, in B major, is slow
and beautiful, a lyric and magical adagio that leads, with no pause, to
the concluding movement, a Rondo Allegro - a happy, excited movement with
two themes serving equally - one melodic and circular, and the other vivid
and eager. Together they bring this tremendous concerto to the final, impressive
triumph Vienna experienced too - after a harder period it overcomes and
finishes the 19th century as the cultural capital of the cheerful Europe
of Romanticism.
Beethoven, who was one of the best pianists of his time, composed one
of the greatest piano concertos, and saw to it that it would be his last
one - a grand inspirational legacy, written by a person whose hearing was
almost completely gone, but his sight was penetrating and profound.
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