Second Piano Concert (B-Dur) by Ludwig van Beethoven: In “Searching” of the Author's Style

The relevance of the study is dictated by the demand for the music of the brightest composer of the period of the classical style — L. Beethoven — in modern performing art and modern musicology, focused on a diverse range of problems: reconstruction of the concept and process of creating works, compositional features and dramaturgy of opuses from different periods of the composer's work, historically accurate performance of it works, psychology of a creative personality, etc. A problem that has lasting significance also falls into the same series — the problem of the composer's individual style, conditioned, on the one hand, by the linguistic laws of the “current” style of the era, and on the other, by the formation of the principles of new musical thinking in its depths. The appeal to the music of L. Beethoven by the author of this study became symptomatic, including in view of the next anniversary of the composer — namely, the 250th anniversary of his birth. The purpose of the research is to identify and substantiate, in the process of analyzing music, one of Beethoven's early works — his Piano Concerto No. 2 (B-dur) — recognizable stylistic “signs” of the composer's individual creative handwriting, thereby arguing and establishing its relationship with the works of the period creative maturity. The scientific novelty of the research is reported by: 1) attraction of the latest musicological research on the issues of classical style in music and creativity of L. Beethoven as a methodological basis for the work; 2) argumentation based on a detailed analysis of the music of L. Beethoven's piano concerto No. 2 of the peculiarities of his musical language, composition and drama; 3) establishing and substantiating the relationship between the work of the early period of the composer's work with his mature musical and dramatic concepts. The research methodology is based on a flexible interaction between the methods of historical (comparative historical method) and theoretical musicology (holistic analysis, analysis of various aspects of the musical language, functional analysis of musical form). The productivity of their combination, as well as their intersection in the category of “style”, determined the scientific significance of the results obtained and indicated one of the possible methodological directions for further study of the composer's creative heritage. The study is undoubtedly of practical value both for teachers of musical theoretical disciplines and for performers. It is another important component of the musical Beethoveniana