In the manga, what piece is Chiaki playing at the beginning? In chapter 1 of Nodame Cantabile, it is implied that Chiaki is playing some Beethoven in preparation for the school concerto competition. We also get a snapshot of a score, which presumably contains what he is playing.



Do we know what piece Chiaki is playing? In the anime, he is playing Beethoven's Piano Concerto no. 5 ("Emperor"), and it is easy to recognise as he starts from the beginning of the first movement. However, the score here does not correspond to any section of the concerto that I can recognise, and in any case, we are not explicitly told what piece he is practising.

I tried skimming through a copy of the piano part of Emperor and could not find a section that matched. Inputting part of this score into the Musipedia search engine also did not get any useful results.
This is the first movement of Beethoven's Piano Concerto no. 1, which is not the concerto being played in the anime. Examining the section where the piano begins to play, we can see a correspondence between the orchestral reduction (as shown in a piano part) and the bars of top line shown in the manga. The lower line corresponds to the opening of the piano part, although a couple notes at the very beginning are missing.

For comparison, here is the relevant section of the piano part. The orchestral part (i.e. the first line) is marked with yellow brackets; the piano (i.e. the second) with blue. (Note that the score Chiaki is using has a different format from the one I found; his includes the orchestral reduction even when the piano is playing, and the reduction occupies a separate line.)