When Barry Manilow recorded several songs that were based on popular instrumental melodies by Frédéric Chopin, these treatments brought wide recognition to music that had previously been known only exclusively to classical pianists. This kind of adaptation was not new, of course, and continues to this day. A younger contemporary of Beethoven, the composer and arranger Friedrich Silcher (1789-1860) fitted lyrics to a dozen of Beethoven’s instrumental melodies in the years following the master’s death. While memorialzing the music’s creator, Silcher’s arrangements also brought his music into domestic realms where it could be enjoyed and performed by amateur musicians at home.

Silcher’s knowledge of Beethoven’s music was clearly extensive, for he draws from works in numerous genres. “Durch dich so selig” combines an anonymous love poem to the slow movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. That simple melody includes a prominent echo, which Silcher deftly uses to repeat the key text “so selig” (so blissful). In “Gruss der Seelen” Silcher features a similar melody drawn from the second movement of the Violin Sonata No. 7. “Sehnshucht” calls up the main theme of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 12, which the composer himself subjected to numerous variations in its original context. The final song today celebrates one of Beethoven’s more familiar melodies. Heard at the start of every episode of Karl Haas’s radio show Adventures in Good Music, the Adagio from the Pathétique Sonata shares common features with the other songs set by Silcher: an undulating accompaniment beneath a singing main line, unfolding smoothly in a slow tempo. That someone like Billy Joel could lean on this same melody for a 50s-style ballad (“This Night”) shows its timeless appeal and innate flexibility.

Music historians’ accounts of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) and his works so often highlight the dramatic nature of both his life and his music.  With music that tugs at the heartstrings and a biography that does much the same – virtually complete hearing loss by age 48, troubled personal relationships, and his death following liver failure at age 56 – the German composer cuts quite a poetic figure within the classical music world.  Considered by many as one of the greatest Western European composers of all time, he is undoubtedly one of the most influential for the lasting innovations he brought to almost every genre he touched, the piano concerto included.

Although he did not compose nearly as many piano concertos as his predecessors Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven still left his mark on the genre.  In general, he expanded the size of the orchestral ensemble and lengthened the duration of the concerto. Most importantly, he elevated the status of the soloist within the genre, giving the pianist a role that worked in dialogue – rather than simply in tandem – with the orchestral accompaniment.  Regarding his Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, in particular, he surprised audiences of the day with some additional unique features.  The first movement, for instance, begins with the piano all by itself, rather than with the orchestra, allowing it to emerge as a fully autonomous voice from the very outset of the work.  Capitalizing on the soloist’s newfound power, the second movement casts the piano in stark contrast to the aggressive opening statements of the orchestra. This feature allows the keyboard to eventually pacify the larger instrumental force not through volume but through quiet, sensitive lyricism.  Finally, instead of giving audiences a break between movements, Beethoven transitions seamlessly from the middle to the last section of the work, contributing to a sense of more organic unity amongst the distinct parts of the whole piece.

Today’s performance features a reduced scoring of the concerto for piano sextet (i.e., piano plus string quintet). The arrangement was completed in the 1880s by Vinzenz Lachner, a minor composer and conductor active in Vienna and Mannheim. Lachner, a friend of both Brahms and Liszt, took the latter’s two-piano arrangement of the concerto and produced the string quintet scoring heard today.

Jason Stell and Emily Masincup, © 2025