The concerto is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 soprano clarinets in B♭, 2 bassoons, 2 French horns in F, 2 trumpets in B♭, timpani, strings and piano soloist.

Development: The piano enters, playing similar scales used in the beginning of the second exposition, this time in D major rather than C minor.

Recapitulation: The orchestra restates the theme in fortissimo, with the wind instruments responding by building up a minor ninth chord as in the exposition.

The cadenza Beethoven wrote is at times stormy and ends on a series of trills that calm down to pianissimo.

Coda: Beethoven subverts the expectation of a return to the tonic at the end of the cadenza by prolonging the final trill and eventually arriving on a dominant seventh.

The piano plays a series of arpeggios before the music settles into the home key of C minor.