Ludwig van Beethoven's "lost" E flat major Piano concerto (WoO 4) was written when the composer was a mere fourteen years of age. To enhance his son's reputation as a prodigy, Beethoven's father had claimed then that the work was written when the boy was 12; Beethoven was not aware of this false claim until he was 40 years old, by which time he had long since disowned the piece. The original orchestral parts were lost over time, and by the time the work was rediscovered around 1890 only the solo piano part had survived.

The reconstruction of the concerto came at the hand of the diligent musicologist Willy Hess, who drew on cues in the extant piano part to fashion the orchestration. The Rondo finale, an attractive if naïve piece, was completed first by him, in 1934. Over the next nine years, the first two movements were restored, and the work was published in 1943. It is impossible to know how closely this E flat major Concerto compares with the original, but one can only surmise that while this version offers a charming youthful concerto of limited merit, it probably cannot rightly presume to replicate the 1784 score, which itself, if we can accept the composer's judgment, was not among his better early works. Hess admittedly used orchestral scoring that Beethoven surely would not have had the proficiency to create at that tender age. It must be remembered that while Beethoven showed great talent in his teens, he was not the prodigy Mozart was, and did not produce a true masterpiece until his adult years.

The first movement of this concerto was premiered in 1934 by pianist Walter Frey. Few pianists have shown interest in this work. While It is difficult to regard the E flat concerto in its standard arrangement as an authentic piano concerto by Beethoven, the parentage of the solo piano manuscript is undisputed.

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