Composed 1800–01.
I. Allegro con brio
II. Largo
III. Rondo. Allegro
Maurizio Pollini (piano), Wiener Philharmoniker, Eugen Johum
Claudio Arrau, piano; Bernard Haitink
Between January 1803 and May 1804 Beethoven lived in a dwelling for employees at the Theatre an der Wien because he was writing an opera for the theatre. (The Libretto "Vesta's Fire" that the composer tackled at first did not seem convincing so Beethoven gave it up and used "Leonore" instead.) Already in the first spring of his stay at the theatre Beethoven was offered the Theatre Hall to hold his own academy concert presenting several first performances on April 5th, 1803: Besides the 2nd symphony, op. 36, the oratorio "Christ on the mount of olives", op. 85, and his 3rd piano concert, op. 37, were played for the first time.
It took Beethoven years to finish the 3rd piano concert. Beethoven had intended the concert in C minor for his first academy concert on April 2nd, 1800, then stopped working on it and played an older concert. He resumed the composition for a performance that was planned to take place as part of an academy concert of the Tonkunstler Society at the Hofburgtheater in April 1802. When the event concert was cancelled, all composition efforts for the piano concert were stopped again, and Beethoven did not finish it before the academy concert in the following year. Because the oratorio would be presented as an entirely new piece next to the concert, Beethoven did not have a lot of time to write it down. Although both orchestra parts were finished, Beethoven had not completed the solo part that he played himself during the concert and then interpreted freely in parts. It should be one year later when his pupil Ferdinand Ries performed the concert in public that Beethoven finished the piano part.
Beethoven composed this work in 1799-1800, and introduced it at Vienna on April 5, 1803. The first sketches go back to 1797—after he'd composed the B flat Piano Concerto (published as No. 2), but before composition of the C major Concerto (in 1798, published as No. 1). Although Beethoven played the first performance of No. 3 in 1803 from a short score—no one was going to steal it from him!—he'd actually completed the music prior to April 1800, apart from a few last-minute adjustments. In other words, before he wrote the Second Symphony (Op. 36), the Moonlight Piano Sonata (Op. 27/2), or the Op. 31 triptych for keyboard.
The model for this startlingly dramatic concerto was Mozart's C minor (K. 491), which Beethoven played in public concerts. But "model" does not mean he merely imitated; indeed, the orchestra's traditional first exposition is so extensively developed that the soloist's repetition risks sounding anticlimactic. Otherwise, as Charles Rosen has written with formidable insight in The Classical Style, "There are many passages in the first movement, Allegro con brio, which allude to Mozart's concerto in the same key...particularly the role of the piano after the cadenza. But the striking development section, with [a] new melody half-recitative [and] half-aria, is entirely original, as is the new sense of weight to the form." Beethoven wrote down that cadenza several years later, to preserve the work's character and momentum, when implacable deafness seriously disadvantaged his public appearances at the keyboard.
To his contemporaries the slow movement came—and can still come—as a shock. Not only did he mark it Largo (which is to say very slowly), in 3/8 time, but chose the remote key of E major (four sharps, vs. C minor's three flats). Alone, the piano leads off for 11 measures, introducing both the main theme and ornamentation that accompanies it throughout. Here Beethoven anticipated the solo opening of his G major Fourth Concerto five years down the road, although in that work he dispensed with thematic decorations, beautiful as they were (and are) in the Largo of No. 3.
Characteristically, the finale is a rondo Allegro, again in tonic C minor, with a pair of principal themes introduced by the soloist. This movement is rich in humor yet also dramatic, with a passage midway in E major to remind us where we've been. Following another (but brief) cadenza, Beethoven switches to C major, accelerates the tempo to Presto, and gives the orchestra the last word.
(All Music Guide)