Beethoven’s Piano Concerto in B-flat major, published as No. 2, was in fact his first in order of composition. He may have started the Concerto as early as 1793, in Bonn, and continued it later that year in Vienna while studying with Haydn.
The first performance of the Concerto in B-flat took place at a charity concert in the Burgtheater in Vienna in March of 1795, one of the 24-year-old composer-pianist’s earliest appearances in public in the imperial capital. Yet he withheld the work from publication until 1801 and didn’t write out the solo in full until late in 1800, in a version that was probably substantially different from that heard in 1795.
Although Beethoven was by this time already an experienced orchestral composer, the Concerto in B-flat was the first orchestral work he deemed fit for publication: to forestall criticism, he would coyly announce to the publisher that it and its successor, the Piano Concerto in C major, were not “among my best works.”
Well, see how you feel about this music as performed for you by pianist Martha Argerich, and the orchestra conducted by Seiji Ozawa:
