Beethoven Concerto no. 5 Emperor Part 1

Anna Kipling

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The Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73 by Ludwig van Beethoven, popularly known as the “Emperor Concerto”, was his last piano concerto. It was written between 1809 and 1811 in Vienna, and was dedicated to Archduke Rudolf, Beethoven’s patron and pupil. The first performance took place in November 1811, at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, the soloist being Friedrich Schneider. In 1812, Carl Czerny, his student, gave the Vienna debut of this work.
The epithet of “Emperor” for this concerto, used in English-speaking countries, was not Beethoven’s own, but was coined by Johann Baptist Cramer, the English publisher of the concerto. Its duration is approximately forty minutes.
The concerto is scored for a solo piano, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets in B-flat (Clarinet I playing Clarinet in A in movement 2), two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani in E-flat and B-flat, and strings.
Valentina Lisitsa (Ukrainian: Валентина Лисиця, translit. Valentyna Lysytsya, Russian: Валентина Лисица) is a Ukrainian-born classical pianist. Lisitsa resides in North Carolina in the USA. Her husband, Alexei Kuznetsoff, is also a pianist and her partner in a number of piano duets.
Born in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1973, Lisitsa started playing the piano at the age of three, performing her first solo recital at the age of four. Despite her early disposition to music, her dream at that point was to become a professional chess player. Lisitsa attended the Lysenko music school for Gifted Children and, later, Kiev Conservatory, where she and her future husband, Alexei Kuznetsoff, studied under Dr. Ludmilla Tsvierko. It was when Lisitsa met Kuznetsoff that she began to take music more seriously. In 1991 they won the first prize in The Murray Dranoff Two Piano Competition. In the same year, they moved to the United States to further their careers as concert pianists. Their New York debut was at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center in 1995.
See: Website Valentina Lisitsa

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Anna Kipling

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