Piano Concerto No. 4 may refer to:

Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, was composed in 1805–1806.

Orchestration

It is scored for solo piano and an orchestra consisting of a flute, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings.

Movements

Like many classical concertos, it has three movements:

Premiere and reception

It was premiered in March 1807 at a private concert of the home of Prince Franz Joseph von Lobkowitz. The Coriolan Overture and the Fourth Symphony were premiered in that same concert. However, the public premiere was not until a concert on 22 December 1808 at Vienna's Theater an der Wien. Beethoven again took the stage as soloist. The marathon concert saw Beethoven's last appearance as a soloist with orchestra, as well as the premieres of the Choral Fantasy and the Fifth and Sixth symphonies. Beethoven dedicated the concerto to his friend, student, and patron, the Archduke Rudolph.

No. 4 may refer to:

№ 4 (sometimes referred to as No. 4) is the fourth album released by American hard rock band Stone Temple Pilots, released on October 26, 1999, by Atlantic Records. The album was a return to the band's earlier hard rock roots, while also blending elements of heavy metal, psychedelic rock, and alternative rock. Despite the lack of promotion due to singer Scott Weiland's one-year jail sentence shortly before the album's release, No. 4 was certified Platinum by the RIAA on August 7, 2000, and by the CRIA in August 2001. The song "Down" was nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance at the Grammy Awards. The album also produced one of STP's biggest hits, "Sour Girl", which charted at #78 on the Billboard Hot 100, their only song to appear on that chart. The CD was originally released as a digipak, then later changed to a standard jewel case.

Musical style

No.4 displays a deliberate effort by the band to return to a more hard rock-oriented sound featured on its first two albums. Allmusic cited the album as STP's "hardest effort" since Core, remarking that "it's as if STP decided to compete directly with the new generation of alt-metal bands who prize aggression over hooks or riffs." Stephen Erlewine also wrote that No.4 "consolidates all [of STP's] strengths."

The Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in G minor, Op. 33, was the first of three concertos that Antonín Dvořák completed—it was followed by a violin concerto and then a cello concerto—and the piano concerto is probably the least known and least performed.

As the eminent music critic Harold C. Schonberg put it, Dvořák wrote "an attractive Piano Concerto in G minor with a rather ineffective piano part, a beautiful Violin Concerto in A minor, and a supreme Cello Concerto in B minor".

Background

Dvořák composed his piano concerto from late August through 14 September 1876. Its autograph version contains many corrections, erasures, cuts and additions, the bulk of which were made in the piano part. The work was premiered in Prague on 24 March 1878, with the orchestra of the Prague Provisional Theatre conducted by Adolf Čech with the pianist Karel Slavkovsky.

While working on the concerto, Dvořák himself realized that he had not created a virtuosic piece in which the piano does battle with the orchestra. Dvořák wrote: "I see I am unable to write a Concerto for a virtuoso; I must think of other things." What Dvořák composed instead was a symphonic concerto in which the piano plays a leading part in the orchestra, rather than opposed to it.

Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major was composed between 1929 and 1931. The concerto is in three movements and is heavily influenced by jazz, which Ravel had encountered on a concert tour of the United States in 1928.

Background

The concerto was deeply infused with jazz idioms and harmonies, which, at the time, were highly popular in Paris as well as the United States, where Ravel was traveling on a piano tour. Ravel remarked that "The most captivating part of jazz is its rich and diverting rhythm. ...Jazz is a very rich and vital source of inspiration for modern composers and I am astonished that so few Americans are influenced by it." After his well-received tour, Ravel wanted to give the first public performance of this new work himself. However, health issues precluded this possibility, with his preparatory practice of Liszt's and Chopin's etudes leading to fatigue. He then planned a premiere for March 9, 1931, in Amsterdam, but these plans also were canceled due to his work on the Concerto for the Left Hand, his many public appearances, and his performances of his other works.

The Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments was written by Igor Stravinsky in Paris in 1923–24. This work was revised in 1950.

It was composed four years after the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, which he wrote upon his arrival in Paris after his stay in Switzerland. These two compositions are from Stravinsky's neoclassical period, and represent a departure from the composer's previous Russian style of The Rite of Spring.

This concerto numbers among many works for piano written about the same time to be played by the composer himself. This is also true of Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra (1929), his Sonata of 1924 and his Serenade in A (1925). He kept the performance rights to himself for a number of years, wanting the engagements for playing this work for himself, as well as urgently desiring to keep "incompetent or Romantic hands" from "interpreting" the piece before undiscriminating audiences.

Orchestration

The orchestra is scored for two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, cor anglais, two clarinets, two bassoons (second bassoon doubling contrabassoon), four horns, four trumpets, three trombones and tuba and accompanied by timpani, cymbals. Although combining winds and piano was unusual at the time, the form had been explored earlier in the twentieth century and would be explored later.