John Field's second foray into the realm of the piano concerto, the Piano Concerto No. 2 in A flat major has always been his most famous and for a large part of the nineteenth century was a staple of the concert artist's and teacher's repertoire. It's not really certain when he wrote the piece—sometime between 1805 and 1811, most likely—and it may in fact be that the Concerto No. 2 was actually the third of his concertos to be composed and that it and the Concerto No. 3 got flip-flopped somewhere along the way (Field's first four concertos were published more or less simultaneously in 1815-1816, and Field was hardly the type of composer to keep notes on his music and its chronology).

The Concerto No. 2 is really quite better than the youthful Concerto No. 1 (composed back in 1798 or 1799). No. 1 opens bright and brash and, while undeniably impressive for a teenage work, continues in a more or less generic fashion. At the start of No. 2, on the other hand, all is velvet and subdued. The audience is given to understand, in these first bars, that tunefulness and ingratiating sound will be more important in the concerto than flash and dazzle or iron-backed tutti drama; but when the soloist enters in a bravura torrent of sound, it is learned that all is not to be lyric and gentle. And when martial dotted rhythms invade the movement and drive it forward through its wild, loud center, one cannot but think of the powerhouse virtuosi yet to come in the century—indeed, such virtuosi loved this piece. Soloist and orchestra are in perfect conflict with one another—background and foreground are made palpable not just by dynamics and the employment of colorless accompaniment, but by a juxtaposition of basic musical characters: smooth, refined on the one hand, electrifying on the other. Herein lies the genius of Field's Concerto No. 2. It is, one must say, a remarkably modern approach to concerto writing.

The concerto, like most of Field's, has three movements: Allegro moderato, Poco Adagio, and Rondo. There is a justly famous B major episode in the middle of the first movement—it shines and shines, and the pianist conjures up a brand new melody to play for it. The E flat major second movement is marked molto espressivo and was published separately in 1811 under the title Serenade. The finale is, like the finale of the Concerto No. 1, a rondo romp in 2/4 meter.

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