About this Piece

In the summer of 1781, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart arrived in Vienna to begin his new life as a freelance musician. (He had been fired with a literal “kick to my arse” from his previous job in Salzburg.) Lacking a patron and on bad terms with his father, who had previously ruled over Wolfgang’s career with an iron fist, Mozart now bore sole responsibility for furthering his career in the Austrian capital. 

To break through the flood of piano virtuosos hungry to conquer the city’s stages, he had to not only perform a steady stream of public concerts but also self-produce every aspect of those appearances: hiring orchestral musicians, securing venues, coordinating publicity—and, of course, composing the music he would perform as the evening’s star soloist. In a strategic move, Mozart took a cue from the concert tours that had brought him great acclaim as a teenage prodigy: He focused on composing piano concertos. Over the next five years, he produced 15 of these three-movement works for solo piano and orchestra, each one heartily embraced by Vienna’s fickle audiences.  

These concertos weren’t just dazzling—they were also profound. Mozart didn’t agree with his contemporaries that concertos were casual, frivolous entertainment in which fits of technical spectacle took center stage, so he forged a new path. He dug beneath the shimmering surface of the instrumental concerto, unearthing greater depths of expression that mirrored the full range of human emotion—the same approach he took with his most beloved musical genre: opera. 

In fact, if you find yourself swept away by propulsive drama and operatic lyricism while experiencing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24, there’s good reason. This music, written in early 1786, circulated in the composer’s mind as he finished work on The Marriage of Figaro, the madcap romantic comedy of desire, deception, and forgiveness he created with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. But unlike the countless moments of laughter and levity the pair delivered in their groundbreaking opera, Mozart’s 24th Concerto traces a devastating journey of pathos and longing—the yin to Figaro’s yang. 

Here he translates the breathless pacing and intricate dialogue that made Figaro a triumph into this purely instrumental form. Using the largest wind section of any of his concertos—a single flute alongside pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets—Mozart elevates the orchestral voices from a brood of background players to protagonists in the concerto’s stormy saga. 

Suspense looms large over the opening passage—a slithering figure in the strings, over which woodwinds emit melancholy sighs before Mozart revs his engine and plunges us into the meat of the first movement. On our journey through vast emotional landscapes, we encounter moments of grief, probing introspection, and even hazy reverie as the woodwinds take up a gentle country dance. But each time Mozart evokes sunnier pastures, the opening melody incessantly returns to darken the skies.  

Tranquility finally arrives in the central Larghetto, where piano and strings spin an affectionate song without words, like a candlelit lullaby shared between mother and child. Playful conversations emerge between the piano and solo winds, calling to mind how Mozart juggles all of the characters in Figaro—especially the scene made famous by the film Amadeus, where a simple duet slowly blossoms into a tapestry of vibrant voices. 

The concerto’s sinister mood returns in the finale, a set of variations on a mysterious dance tune that showcases Mozart’s breathtaking talents as an improviser, one able to spin even the simplest themes into filigreed lace. Mozart always reveled in delivering unexpected moments of contrast, and there are plenty to savor here—like the hurricane of notes that flies across the keyboard before giving way to quiet chorales in the winds, or the next-to-last variation, where major-key joy finally breaks through the dark clouds of sorrow.  

Just as we’re lulled into thinking the concerto will end in a blaze of glory, however, the music takes a demonic turn and soloist and orchestra furiously race to the conclusion of a work many consider Mozart’s finest concerto. Even Beethoven once remarked to a composer friend: “We’ll never be able to write anything like that.” —Michael Cirigliano II