Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23

Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 Program Notes

In Vienna, Mozart composed about three piano concertos a year, mostly for benefit concerts at palaces, performing for a private, wealthy and fairly discerning audience. At the same time, he was teaching, composing, establishing his young family with Constanze, and in 1786, the year of this concerto, beginning his partnership with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. This concerto premiered a few months after their opera The Marriage of Figaro, and probably close to the time they began planning Don Giovanni.

The key of A major was favored by Mozart, including in his Clarinet Concerto and Quintet, Symphonies 14, 21 and 29, the fifth violin concerto (‘Turkish’) and other works – its sympathetic variations with the open strings of the violins lends it a certain brightness, and

the tendencies of its related keys have a wide musical palette.

Born: January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria
Died: December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria