Weber composed this Concert Piece in 1821 and played the first performance at Berlin on June 28 of that year. The Konzertstück, third and last of Weber's works for piano and orchestra, was created while he rehearsed the first performance of Der Freischütz in Berlin, and was premiered by him just ten days after a triumphant first performance of his best opera. The Concert Piece is unlike the two piano concertos that preceded it, for Weber wrote all four sections of this volatile work (complete with "plot") in a single movement. As he played it through for his wife and his young English pupil, Julius Benedict, the composer told them the following scenario:

"A châtelaine sits alone on her balcony, gazing off in the distance. Her knight has gone on a Crusade to the Holy Land. Years have passed, battles have been fought; is he still alive? Will she ever see him again?" The music, in F minor, is marked Larghetto affetuoso and colored plaintively by clarinets and bassoons, very much in the spirit of Weber's new Romanticism.

Then, Allegro passionato but still in F minor, "her excited imagination summons a vision of her noble husband lying wounded and forsaken on the battlefield. Could she not fly to his side and die with him? She falls back, unconscious. Then from the distance comes the sound of a trumpet. There in the forest something flashes in the sunlight as it comes nearer and nearer." First from the clarinet, then in the full orchestra a Tempo di marcia bursts forth in C major, with echoes of Beethoven and, as it quickens, Fidelio especially.

"Knights and squires, with the Crusaders' cross and banners waving, are acclaimed by the crowd. And there her husband is among them!" An octave glissando signals the lady's joyful recognition before "she sinks into his arms." An impassioned bridge passage for solo piano brings on a Presto giocoso in F major, depicting "happiness without end! The woods and waves sing a song of love, while a thousand voices proclaim its victory" as Weber emerges from the keyboard era of Hummel and Czerny to light the way for Liszt.

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