By 1781, when Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791) settled permanently in Vienna, he had had to his credit no fewer than ten piano concertos. And yet as in other genres, in his concertante output for piano too, he was only to reach the peak of his creative concentration. The fifteen piano concertos he wrote between the winter of 1782 and the year 1786 evidence that during the initial years of Mozart’s stay in Vienna the genre stood in the focus of his attention. Mozart, who was in fact most valued in Vienna as a superb piano virtuoso, had to take constant care of his repute by producing ever new piano concertos which he would perform at his own series of subscription concerts.

Regardless of their chronological closeness, the concertos featured here exemplify different compositional approaches. The Concerto No. 14 in F flat major, K. 449, which was completed in Vienna on 9 February, 1784, was the first composition to be entered by Mozart in his own opus catalogue. It is also one of the handful of concertos which he did not write exclusively for himself, but for his pupil Barbara Ployer, apart from whom the only other authorized interpreters of the piece were Mozart’s sister Nannerl and the composer himself. In a letter to his father of May 1784, Mozart noted that the concerto “is of a thoroughly special kind, and it is written for a small rather than large orchestra.” He went on to say that the work could also be performed “a quattro”, that is with only string quartet accompaniment. This accounts for the sporadic employment of the wind group of oboes and French horns which can be included “ad libitum”. Also linked with the work’s chamber format are its several deflections from the traditional sonata form, which may likewise explain Mozart’s remark on the concerto’s being “of a special kind”; thus in the Andantino movement, the development section features a transposed variant of the exposition in A flat major, and the final Rondo, which brings into the play the principles of sonata form, the principal idea’s last repetition comes in the form of a variation in six-eight time, in contrast to the initial common time. This finale, which blends spontaneous musical inspiration with intricate use of contrapuntal and variational techniques, ranks among the highlights of Mozart’s early Viennese period.

The following two works belong with the famous group of six piano concertos dating from 1785 - 1786. These are fully mature works of great individuality, both of which are justly ranked alongside Mozart’s most frequently performed concertos. This is most particularly true of the Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488, whose final notes Mozart wrote on 2 March, 1786, just before the completion of The Marriage of Figaro. The concerto combines in its music a symphonic expression with soloist brilliance and wealth of ideas, all of which is set against the back-drop of a supremely clear-cut form. The opening movement is in the classical sonata form, involving a double exposition and a distinctly profiled thematic dualism, with the development ushering in a seemingly new idea which in fact derives from the exposition’s final bars. The Adagio, lyric and extremely tender, is in three parts with the return of the opening section, and the finale follows a Rondo pattern.

The Concerto No. 25 in C major, K. 503 was completed in late 1786, in chronological neighbourhood of the Prague Symphony with which it shares many attributes of Mozart’s late style. These include most notably a tendency towards softening the edge between opposites for the sake of a continuous flow of music; as well as frequent oscillation between the major and minor tonalities on the same degree; and a constantly growing share of contrapuntal work. The introductory movement is characterized by a broadly based formal disposition, with four thematic forms alternating in a double exposition. This is yet another of the many instances of Mozart’s inexhaustible invention modifying and enriching some of the standard formal patterns. For its part, the Andante has the nature of a romance, with respect to whose undisturbed musical flow the sonata form without development appears to be more than anything else a mere underlying principle. The brilliant finale, with passages of genuine sparkle, is anchored in sonata rondo form with a tonally unified recapitulation.