About this Piece

All of Mozart’s five authentic violin concertos belong to the same year, 1775, and they precede all but one of the piano concertos. In his maturity, Mozart showed no interest in string concertos (with the exception of the wonderful Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, K. 364) and was curiously negligent of the cello as a solo instrument. We have to be grateful that these five violin concertos exist at all. The G-major Concerto is the third of the set and part of the final trio, which attest to the greatness to come.

Mozart, then 19 years old, was Konzertmeister at the Salzburg court. He wrote concertos for fellow violinist Gaetano Brunetti’s performances at court. The scoring is light and the solo writing gracefully ornate. The three-movement form is standard, although in this work and the A-major Concerto, K. 219 (the last of the set), Mozart fills out the finale with enchanting diversions. 

The first theme of the opening movement is borrowed from an aria in Mozart’s opera Il rè pastore, premiered in Salzburg a few months earlier. It is hard to suppose he might ever have been short of ideas, since his melodies are prodigally lavished on every movement; more likely he was struck by the violinistic idiom of the original phrase and wished to give it a better setting.

The second movement’s opening holds back accompaniment until the most expressive note of the phrase, a masterful use of restraint. Muted inner strings emphasize the serenity of the solo line. A cadenza marks the close, as in the previous movement.

The finale is a lively dance in triple meter, much of it reduced to the simplest textures as though the bass part is missing. Two interpolations intrude: The first is an elegant gavotte of briefest span in the minor key; sustained oboes, as always in Mozart, provide a certificate of high quality. There follows a folksy section, like a glimpse of Papageno—the bird catcher from his final opera, The Magic Flute—with some prominent inner drones, before the rondo theme returns. The tune is of Alsatian origin, so when Mozart wrote to his father describing an informal performance of the piece, he said: “In the evening at supper I played my Strasbourg Concerto, which went very smoothly. Everyone praised my beautiful pure tone.” This does not explain his reasons for including the tune in the concerto, but it does remind us that Mozart was a fine violinist as well as a peerless keyboard player. In keeping with its unpredictable character, the movement ends not with the usual orchestral flourish but with the acknowledgment that the winds have by now earned the right to close the work on their own.

―From the LA Phil archives