When Beethoven was 22 he moved to Vienna where there was an abundance of virtuoso pianists.
Ludwig van Beethoven - Portrait by Joseph Karl Stieler (1820). Photo: Wikimedia Commons
With his own ability on the instrument to add to the talent pool, the piano concerto was a genre of music that then flourished there.
Indra Hughes presents an overview of the complete cycle, from the standard compositional elements Beethoven inherited from Mozart and Haydn to his revolutionary development of these elements over the course of the five concertos.
