Beethoven still hadn’t written down all the music for his 3rd piano concerto by the time of its premiere – just some messy scrawls to remind him what was in his head for solo passages. This confounded the student he invited to be his page-turner at the premiere, Ignaz von Seyfried, who later wrote of the adventure:

“I saw empty pages with here and there what looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs, totally unintelligible to me, scribbled to serve as clues for him. He played nearly all of his part from memory, since, obviously, he had put so little on paper. So, whenever he reached the end of some invisible passage, he gave me a surreptitious nod and I turned the page. My anxiety not to miss such a nod amused him greatly and the recollection of it at our convivial dinner after the concert sent him into gales of laughter.”

Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #3, with Melvyn Tan as the soloist playing the fortepiano of Beethoven’s era and an orchestra of period instruments, is today’s Midday Masterpiece at 2:00 pm.