Beethoven follows his dazzling opening bars with an expressive melody in the minor (its theme is borrowed from one of the youthful piano quartets of 1785), before he introduces the equally tender second subject in the major. Even taken together, however, these afford no more than brief respite before the pyrotechnics resume; and the first stage of the central development section, with its fortissimo broken chords sweeping up and down the keyboard, continues the predominantly forceful style.

For his slow movement, Beethoven turns to the radiant key of E major—a change that brings with it a sense of heightened expressiveness. The Adagio’s theme is a distant cousin of the opening movement’s principal subject, and the relationship between the two is highlighted towards the end of the slow movement, where the theme is given out in a dramatic fortissimo which revives the first movement’s key of C major. But the main emphasis of the slow movement is placed on its episode in the minor, whose ‘rocking’ figuration turns out later to form an accompaniment to a wonderfully expressive idea with elongated appoggiaturas which has the pianist’s hands constantly crossing over each other.

The scherzo, with its contrapuntal theme, and the fleeting arpeggios of its shadowy trio, has a sting in its tail, in the shape of a surprise coda taking its point of departure from the dropping octave of the scherzo’s last bar. The coda ends with a composed fade-out which provides a transition to the finale—a virtuoso rondo in whose closing bars Beethoven indulges in a witticism which was to become something of a hallmark in the works of his early maturity: the rondo theme suddenly appears as if from afar, and in the ‘wrong’ key, before the mistake is abruptly corrected in an explosive flurry of activity which brings the curtain down.

from notes by Misha Donat © 2018