Antonín Dvorák composed his only virtuoso vehicle for pianoforte and orchestra during the late summer months of 1876, at the prompting of a notable Czech pianist. The Piano Concerto in G minor, Op. 33, is often described as Dvorák's first effort at concerto composition, but in fact this is not so: he had, a dozen or so years earlier, made what might be called a first draft of a concerto for cello and orchestra—an apprentice piece that quite naturally pales when placed next to his mature cello concerto of 1894-1895. It is usually, but certainly not always accurately, assumed that a pianoforte concerto is a vehicle for better and loftier musical thoughts than is a concerto for string instruments (the assumption goes back to Mozart and Beethoven, for whom it does indeed hold true), and Dvorák—himself far more a string player than a pianist—seems to have approached his Piano Concerto with that assumption in mind. The work is epic in style, grand in architecture, and sewn from an immediately and urgently dramatic fabric very different in kind from that used for the Violin Concerto, Op. 53, of just a few years later.

Even Dvorák devotees, however, are forced to admit that the Piano Concerto is not a completely successful piece of music. Some of the problems come from the piano writing, which is at times imbalanced and unwieldy. Many pianists have edited and rewritten the pianoforte part of the concerto over the years, but, in the end, something is lost in these rewrites. It takes a superb pianist to pull off Dvorák's original, but it can be done: Sviatoslav Richter is perhaps the finest exponent the work has yet known.

There is a full orchestral exposition at the start of the Allegro agitato first movement (again unlike the Violin Concerto, in which the soloist intrudes after just a few bars). The principal theme is symphonic in tone; the second theme veers towards something very chorale-like. A bombastic cadenza is the only sure sign that the work is not really a symphony accidentally scored for piano and orchestra.

The Andante sostenuto in D major is serene, and follows a harmonic path full of quiet surprises. The Allegro con brio finale is started by the soloist, a vintage Beethoven move, and proceeds to romp around in vintage Dvorák style; there is an undisguised Bohemianism to the energetic principal ideas of this rondo.

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