More often than not, Beethoven proclaimed Handel the greatest of composers, placing Mozart a close second. Beethoven knew Mozart's works in great detail, performed his concertos and was inexhaustible in his praise for his predecessor. Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, K. 466 was one of Beethoven's favorite works. At a 31 March performance of La clemenza di Tito in the Vienna Court Opera, arranged by Mozart's widow, Constanze, Beethoven played the D-minor concerto between acts. By 1809 at the latest, Beethoven had realized cadenzas for the concerto for use by his student, Ferdinand Ries, evident by the fact that the manuscript of the first-movement cadenza was in Ries's possession until his death. Beethoven had, by this time, also written cadenzas for his violin concerto and the first four of his own piano concertos. Beethoven's cadenza for the first movement of Mozart's K. 466 was published in the Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunst of 23 January 1836, while that for the finale would not appear until the printing of the complete edition of Beethoven's works in 1862-65. By opening in a decidedly un-Mozartian way—with a trill—Beethoven immediately puts his stamp on the first-movement cadenza. The rapid, ascending bass motive that sneaks in under the trill is from the very beginning of the movement, played first by the orchestra. Otherwise, all of the material Beethoven develops in his cadenza is from the piano part of the solo exposition. Beethoven first refers to the piano's second theme, which gives way to more trills supporting the ascending motive. A statement of the first piano theme follows and after a rising scale covering almost the entire keyboard (of Beethoven's piano) and some hand-over-hand pyrotechnics, the orchestra bursts in to close the movement. Beethoven's cadenza for the Rondo finale is not as lengthy or as developmental as that for the first movement, but it shows a greater contrast in mood. Beginning with the rising figure of the A section, Beethoven tosses about fragments of the theme while the dynamic diminishes nearly to silence. A sudden return of a forte dynamic brings with it a reference to the B-section theme, after which a series of trills begins to modulate to the tonic key. A final trill prolongs the dominant, which resolves on a piano statement of A, signaling the return of the movement proper.

© John Palmer, All Music Guide