The title is the meat of this, but I should put it in context:

I am studying the Henle Verlag Urtext score (for 2 pianos) of Beethoven's first piano Concerto, in C major (don't worry, I can't play it (yet) so please don't accuse me of showing off). There is a note in bar/measure 172 which is an f, immediately after a d i.e. a minor 3rd interval. This passage seems to be in the dominant, i.e. G major, so an f natural seems to jar. A footnote to this (which is what drew my attention to it) reads: "Autograph and first edition do not go beyond upper limit of tessitura, f3; However parralel passage m.387 give major third g2/b2 . . ."

The recordings I can find all play a major 3rd at that point, i.e. f sharp. I don't have an issue about what to play - I am just confused about what tessitura means in this context.

Help anyone?

I think it just means that's the highest note that he wrote.
Didn't the piano finish there at some stage?

I wondered if that was it, as one definition of tessitura is "pitch range" but I thought the piano that Beethoven wrote for went a little higher than that. Perhaps I'm wrong.

It's likely I'm wrong, but I think tessitura means range within the context of a piece, rather than the entire range of an instrument.

It does mean exactly that, the range of notes within a piece. Also the name of my cat!!!!

Beethoven favoured the Streicher or Walter pianos' when he was composing his piano works. These had a range of up to five and a half/six octaves. When he received his stronger, full sized Broadwood piano, he had already completed all his major works, and had stopped performing in public due to his deafness.

The first piano concerto is likely to have been written on the smaller pianos, therefore, limiting the range of the 'tessitura'.

A definition I have is "....the average register of a part (high,middle, low) within the total range of the voice or instrument concerned." (The Hutchinson Dictionary of Music).

Tessitura is a vague term that is used differently (and oftten ambiguously) by different writers, and sometimes differently by the same writer in different contexts. It can mean any or all of:

The complete tonal range of an instrument - whether that is distinct tones (e.g. piano, clarinet, trumpet) or continuous (violin, trombone, voice)

The range of notes used in a piece, or by a particular instrument (or in Opera - particular character) in a piece.

The most comfortable range of a voice

The range over which a voice or instrument sounds best.

It may also include the Dynamic range, and variations in Quality of tone as part of what is considered the Tessitura.

So it is better not to use the word, and say more precisely what you mean!

Of course many writers on music don't think very clearly, so they disguise the fact with vague but impressive sounding words, and hope that you will feel stupid instead.