ABSTRACT
At the entry of the soloist, Beethoven shows that he has learnt something from Mozart for he makes no attempt to contend with the orchestra; in fact the piano is almost apologetic so elementary are its first phrases, so lacking in display. Piano and strings begin the slow movement together; the key is A flat whose third note, C, is imagined to be a pivot between the two scarcely related keys. The music stays resolutely in C major for an unusually long time, the one brush with the dominant being over almost before it has registered. The elaborate phrases which ensue are for the most part decorations of the E flat major chord or its close relatives, the texture remaining essentially Mozartean. The orchestra rather poignantly asserts E flat minor, before the Et incarnatus phrase is given to the piano, alternating with soft sighs on the woodwind.
