Piano Concerto No. 12 in A, K.414(385p)

Joannes Chrisostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart — who began calling himself Wolfgango Amadeo about 1770 and Wolfgang Amadè about 1777 (he used “Amadeus” only in jest ) — was born in Salzburg, Austria, on January 27, 1756, and died in Vienna on December 5, 1791. He composed the A major piano concerto, K.414, late in 1782; the date of the first performance (most likely with the composer as soloist) is not known.

In addition to the solo piano, the score of A major concerto calls for just 2 oboes, 2 horns, and strings (first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses).

One of Mozart’s urgent concerns upon settling permanently in Vienna in 1781 and entering into the state of matrimony the following year was to establish himself financially. And one of the best ways was to write and play piano concertos, which would serve the double function of promoting him as composer and performer. Thus began the series of the great Mozart concertos, starting with three rather modest works composed late in 1782 and early the following year, identified as Nos. 413, 414, and 415 in the Köchel catalogue. In a letter to his father he described all three of them in these enthusiastic terms: 

These concertos are a happy medium between what is too easy and too difficult; they are very brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural, without being vapid. There are passages here and there from which connoisseurs alone can derive satisfaction; but these passages are written in such a way that the less learned cannot fail to be pleased, though without knowing why. 

More than just pleasing a diverse audience in performance, Mozart wanted to sell copies of the music, and the only way he could do that was to make it practical not only for virtuosos appearing in public concert but also for amateurs. In order to attract this much larger audience of purchasers, Mozart took a leaf from the Opus 3 concertos of Johann Samuel Schroeter, which he had come to know several years earlier and which he admired. Schroeter’s trick was to write the orchestra part in such a way that the strings carry all the essential material, with the winds supplying only color and reinforcement. That way, a concerto could be played successfully at home by a pianist with a string quartet. That this was Mozart’s intention with this group of three concertos is demonstrated by his letter to the Parisian publisher Sieber on April 26, 1783: “I have three piano concertos ready, which can be performed with full orchestra, or with oboes and horns, or merely a quattro [i.e., with a string quartet].”

There is no evidence that the composer himself ever played K.414 in public, except for the fact that he wrote two complete sets of cadenzas for the work, although that might only mean that one of his students played the piece. ​ The earlier group of cadenzas may have been written at about the time of the original composition; the later set apparently dates from the winter of 1785-86. 

Throughout K.414, the keyboard seems to dominate more than it does in those concertos with larger orchestral complements, as if to compensate in some way for the diminutive ensemble. ​ This appears not only in the normal “composed” part of the concerto, but also in the “improvised” cadenza-like passages, of which there are a considerable number — one full cadenza in each of the three movements, as well as an additional “Eingang” (or “lead-in” to the return) in the middle of the second movement, and two in the final movement. ​ The slow movement opens with a quotation from a symphony by Johann Christian Bach, one of J.S. ​ Bach’s sons and a major composer in his own right, whom Mozart had ​met and admired as a child on his first London visit and who had died on New Year’s Day of 1782. The concluding rondo is a sprightly Allegretto, possibly Mozart’s second solution to the choice of a finale, since in October 1782 he had already composed a rondo in A that may have been intended for this position.

Steven Ledbetter

Steven Ledbetter, a freelance writer and lecturer on music, was program annotator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 1998.

The first American performance of Mozart’s A major piano concerto, K.414, took place on May 4, 1872, at the Academy of Music in New York; Carl Bergmann conducted the Philharmonic Society, with soloist Richard Hoffman. ​ The Harvard Musical Association introduced the concerto to Boston on December 19, 1878, with H.G. ​ Tucker as soloist and Carl Zerrahn conducting. 

The first Boston Symphony Orchestra performance of K.414 took place in Worcester on April 7, 1953; Pierre Monteux conducted, with Lili Kraus as soloist.