It was probably in his late 20’s that Beethoven first realized he was losing his hearing. He did not confess the malady in writing until the summer of 1801, in a letter to his friend Franz Gerhard Wegeler. Just over a year later, in October 1802, Beethoven penned the famous "Heilegenstadt Testamaent," a letter addressed to his brothers – but never sent – in which he blames his encroaching deafness for his misanthropic behavior, lest social acquaintances discover that the great composer was hard of hearing.
Beethoven’s output is commonly thought of as falling into three "periods," with the middle period starting around the time that Beethoven authored the Heilegenstadt document and ending about ten years later when he lapsed into temporary inactivity. The works from the middle period, which include most of the orchestral music, are generally characterized by a sense of urgency, struggle, and triumph over adversity – evidence of a composer wanting to accomplish great things through his music so as to offset the frustration and isolation in his personal life. If the change in style was prompted by the composer’s growing awareness of his steadily degenerating hearing, however, then we would expect some works from the "early period" to exhibit the same characteristics. Such is the case with the third piano concerto. Although it bears the date 1803, it was substantially completed in 1800 and thus must be considered an early-period work; yet it is a great deal more dramatic, more expressive, and more purposeful than the earlier two concertos.
The opening movement conforms to tradition by allowing the orchestra to present all of the melodic material on its own, before the soloist makes even her first entrance. (Beethoven would abandon this plan later in his career, having the soloist play in the first few measures of both the fourth and fifth concertos.) The first theme is sinister and gloomy, while the second theme (first heard in the clarinet and first violins) has a cheerful, almost operatic quality. This sharp contrast – also a general characteristic of Beethoven’s middle period – lays the groundwork for the remarkable second movement. Whereas the first movement, even in its lyrical moments, has a strong sense of rhythmic propulsion, the second movement seems frozen in time. The contrast is emphasized by the remote harmonic relationship between the first and second movements: C minor versus E major, two tonalities that have little in common. The finale begins with an ironic twist – two pitches that were perfectly at home in the second movement, G-sharp and B, become a jarring diminished seventh in the primary theme, with the G-sharp re-understood as A-flat. Structurally, the movement is traditionally conceived, but harmonic tension is consistently evident. This tension is all washed away by a cheerful coda in C major, in which the soloist – who was, of course, Beethoven himself in the work’s first performance – embodies the ability of the artist to overcome life’s obstacles through musical expression.