There is room for some debate about whether Field's Concerto No. 3 in E flat major for piano and orchestra was originally a multi-movement concerto at all. In two rather than Field's customary three movements, it may have been put together by German publishers Breitkopf and Härtel, with Field's participation, when they were publishing the first batch of Field piano concertos in 1815 and 1816. The second movement, a rondo in polonaise style, is known to have been written before 1809, when it was published in Russia as an individual piece under the name "Polonaise favorite en forme de Rondeau." It is known that sometimes Field wrote only two movements for his concertos and then inserted an arrangement of one or another of his nocturnes as a slow middle movement. Could it be that in the case of the Concerto No. 3 this process of ad-hoc assembly was carried one step further? The first movement of the Concerto No. 3 may have been composed and then abandoned; and when it came time to publish, it would have been a simple and practical thing to "borrow" the aforementioned polonaise movement for use as a finale. While no slow movement was ever permanently attached to the concerto, there are records of Field performing it with one of his nocturnes at the center. Of course, it may well be that any or all of Field's seven piano concertos were in fact put together in such a way, and that the seams were just hidden better than they were for No. 3. The issue is clouded a bit by the fact that the polonaise movement exists in multiple versions. The solo piano version is without an extended middle section heard in the concerto finale version. Was this now-you-hear-it-now-you-don't middle section added for the concerto, or was it taken out for the solo version? The chronology may never be clarified.

Many people believe that at least the first movement of the Concerto No. 3 predates Field's Concerto No. 2. In the usual two-theme Allegro sonata-concerto form, it has little of the sophistication that makes the Concerto No. 2 so attractive a piece of music. It was, as a result, forgotten even before the rest of Field's music was forgotten during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

The polonaise second movement, on the other hand, lasted far longer. Bright and bouncy and in 3/4 meter, it is dedicated to Clementi, Field's teacher, and seems to foreshadow some of the polonaises of Chopin, who knew and admired many of Field's pieces (most famously, the nocturnes, a genre in which Chopin borrowed quite liberally from Field). The episode heard in the concerto version but not heard in the solo piano version is a series of wide arpeggios in C major, a nice digression from the snappy E flat major of the rest of the movement.

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