Emerson Concerto, S. 22

The "Emerson" Piano Concerto (also titled the "Emerson" Overture for Piano and Orchestra) was the unfinished draft of Charles Ives's Emerson movement of the Second Piano Sonata ("Concord, Mass. 1840–60"). Ives intended to convey his idea of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The first version of the Sonata movement, completed around 1919 (although Ives stated in his "Memos" that it was actually "finished" in 1913), had many simplified passages, and omitted several passages that had been some of the "Centrifugal Cadenzas" of the Concerto (this version was published in 1921). These cadenza passages became "Studies" for piano. The passages that were retained in the Sonata movement that had been simplified were restored to their original state in the "Four Transcriptions from 'Emerson'" that were assembled between 1915 and c. 1923. When Ives recorded the Transcriptions in the 1930s, he restored most of these cadenza passages to the Transcriptions and one photostat copy of the Transcriptions ("Copy C") shows how they were to be reinstated in writing (cf. the CD Ives Plays Ives for his recordings).