Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4

Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4—which, in 2021, was the second-most performed piano concerto at Carnegie Hall (with 192 performances)—had an inauspicious beginning. Its first private performance was in March of 1807 by Beethoven at the home of one of his patrons, Prince Franz Joseph von Labkowitz, an aristocrat of Bohemia. It premiered publicly—again with Beethoven playing—on December 22, 1808, as part of a four-hour-long program that included...