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Beethoven was thirty when he completed what is now known as his Third Piano Concerto. It was, in fact, the fourth piano concerto he had composed. At the age of fourteen, he had written a concerto in the key of E-flat, a work that he did not publish. Then, in 1793 and '95, he wrote two more concerti that did appear in print, although in reverse order, the first appearing as number two and the second as number one. All three of these concerti precede the "third" concerto, his opus 37. Of all these works, this was the first to use a minor key and the first to reject the dominant Mozartean style of piano concerto, in which graceful phrases flow back and forth on the keyboard, echoing with the orchestra. Beethoven, who in earlier years had played such works with great success, had gradually grown to despise them, snarling about pianists who, in his words, "only run up and down the keyboard with long-practiced passagework, putsch, putsch, putsch!" Here, by contrast, Beethoven produced a more varied and dynamic work rich in the turbulent emotions for which he was becoming known.
The Third Concerto spent a few years lying more-or-less complete on the shelf before a belated premiere on April 5, 1803, at the Theater an der Wien. As was typical of this composer who disliked sharing the spotlight, the entire program was comprised of Beethoven works. In addition to the new concerto, audiences would also hear the First and Second Symphonies and the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives. Of all four compositions, only the First Symphony had been performed before, so it was new music requiring much preparation by the performers. Due to its complexity, the oratorio co-opted most of the rehearsal time, leaving for the concerto only enough time for one quick run-through on the morning of the concert. Preparation was so rushed that the composer had not yet managed to write out the entire solo piano part, a fact that did not concern Beethoven at all. Since he would be the soloist himself, he planned to save time by playing mostly from memory. However, his page-turner found the situation unsettling. "I saw almost nothing but empty leaves," the poor man later recalled, "at most on one page or the other a few Egyptian hieroglyphs wholly unintelligible to me scribbled down to serve as clues for him... He gave me a secret glance whenever he was at the end of one of the invisible passages, and my scarcely concealed anxiety not to miss the decisive moment amused him greatly. He laughed heartily at the jovial supper we ate afterward." Beethoven did not write out the entire solo part until a year later, when his student Ferdinand Ries was due to play the work and was, apparently, averse to playing invisible notes.
The piano on which Beethoven himself played, that for which he composed this concerto, was quite different from the modern piano on which it is generally performed today. Fortepianos of the eighteenth century had a softer, mellower sound, far less brilliant than that to which audiences are now accustomed, and the instruments themselves were far less forgiving of heavy-handed playing. Indeed, the light and graceful style of piano performance that Beethoven so despised had developed specifically to accommodate the limitations of the instrument. A firmer touch could lead to broken strings, as those who invited Beethoven to play their own fortepianos found to their dismay. Not until 1818, when he received his beloved and hearty Broadwood grand piano, would Beethoven have a piano equal to his imagination. At the time of the Third Concerto, he was making do with a gentler instrument, one that he often played with almost continuous pedal so as to produce at least a measure more resonance. No one would have been more delighted than he to hear the richness with which the work can be rendered today.