Description

Beethoven's five large piano concertos were composed over a 25-year period. This edition presents the Second Concerto in B-flat major in a piano reduction, based on the authoritative Urtext from the Beethoven Complete Edition, which used the composer's autograph as the source. Beethoven likely wrote an initial version of this concerto between 1786-92, before his Piano Concerto No. 1, though it wasn't published until a few months after the first one, in December 1801. The composer regularly performed the B-flat major concerto and made repeated revisions to the work over time. The editor, Beethoven scholar Hans-Werner Küthen, explores these fascinating changes in detail in the preface and commentary.