Concerto in B flat for violin and orchestra

In Mozart’s day, the concerto for one solo instrument and orchestra was the most common musical genre for showcasing the skills of virtuoso soloists. Given their significance to Mozart’s oeuvre and its reception, the concertos for one or more keyboard instruments and orchestra are considered a separate group (work group 15). Mozart generally composed his concertos with specific performers in mind. During the Salzburg years, these were usually colleagues in the Prince-Archiepiscopal court orchestra, even though Mozart is known to have played his own violin concertos, both in Salzburg as well as on the tour to Mannheim and Paris. In Vienna, he also wrote concertos for musical friends such as the hornist Joseph Leitgeb and the clarinetist Anton Stadler. Mozart’s completed concertos are always in three movements with a middle movement in a related key and in slower tempo. The final movement is often in rondo form. Mozart composed solo concertos for bassoon, clarinet, flute, horn, oboe, and violin, and possibly also for violoncello. The few surviving individual movements are usually replacements for concerto movements that Mozart regarded as old-fashioned. Some of the orchestral serenades from the Salzburg years contain short concertos, mostly for violin.