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Almost posted the 9th again.  Whoops. :)

The concerto is divided into three movements:

1. Allegro in E-flat major
2. Adagio un poco mosso in B major
3. Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo in E-flat major

As with Beethoven’s other concertos from this time period, this work has a relatively long first movement. (At twenty-five minutes, the Violin Concerto has the longest; Piano Concerto Nos. 4 and 5 each have opening movements of about twenty minutes.)

I. Allegro

The main theme of the first movement.

The piece begins with three full orchestra chords, each followed by a short cadenza, improvisatory in nature but written out in the score. These short cadenzas recur intermittently throughout the piece.

As music’s Classical era gave way to its Romantic era, composers began experimenting with the manner in which one or more solo instruments introduced music. Beethoven had already explored such possibilities in his Piano Concerto No. 4, but the monumental piano introduction in Piano Concerto No. 5 – it lasts for nearly two minutes – foreshadowed future concertos such as Mendelssohn‘s Violin Concerto or Tchaikovsky‘s Piano Concerto in B-flat minor.

The first movement is deceptively complex. Despite its use of simple chords, including a second theme constructed almost entirely out of tonic and dominant notes and chords, it is full of complex thematic transformations. The complexity is intensified once the piano enters with the first theme, as the expository material is repeated with far more complex variations, virtuoso figurations, and complex modified chords. The second theme enters in the surprising key of B minor before moving to B major and at last the expected key of B-flat major several bars later.

Aside from the opening cadenzas, the movement follows Beethoven’s trademark three-theme sonata structure for a concerto. The orchestral exposition is a typical two-theme sonata exposition, but the second exposition with the piano has a triumphant virtuoso third theme at the end that belongs solely to the solo instrument. Beethoven does this in many of his concertos. The coda at the end of the movement is quite long, and, again typical of Beethoven, uses the open-ended first theme and gives it closure to create a satisfying conclusion.

II. Adagio un poco mosso

The second movement in B major is, in standard contrast to the first, calm and reflective. It moves into the third movement without interruption when a lone bassoon note B drops a semitone to B-flat, the dominant note to the tonic key E-flat. According to Alex Ross, this movement supplied the melody for Bernstein‘s “Somewhere” from West Side Story.^[2]

III. Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo

The main theme of the third movement.

The final movement of the concerto is a seven-part rondo form (ABACABA), a typical concerto finale form. The piano begins the movement by playing its main theme, then followed by the full orchestra. The rondo’s B-section begins with piano scales, before the orchestra again responds. The C-section is much longer, presenting the theme from the A-section in three different keys before the piano performs a cadenza. Rather than finishing with a strong entrance from the orchestra, however, the trill ending the cadenza dies away until the introductory theme reappears, played first by the piano and then the orchestra. In the last section, the theme undergoes variation before the concerto ends with a short cadenza and robust orchestral response.

Prominent recordings