Three concertos in A major, K.414, in F major, K.413 and in C major, K.415

The three concertos in A major, K.414, in F major, K.413 and in C major, K.415, were Mozart’s first piano concertos written after his removal to Vienna. They are approached here as an integral set of three concertos, rather than as three independently conceived, isolated works. The autographs of K.413–15 (on 12-stave ‘Querformat’ paper - a type that was to serve Mozart for many of his Viennese instrumental compositions) are today in the Jagiellonian University Library, Krakow. ¹ All three scores are notated in an uncharacteristically rushed, untidy script. In part, this may have been consequential upon the composer’s strategy for marketing the works in Vienna early in 1783. On 28 December 1782, Mozart had written to his father famously listing the characteristics of all three of these ‘subscription’ concertos (that they tread a middle path between the too easy and the too difficult, and so on - see below), and noting specifically that only one of the three (probably K.414 in A) was already complete at the time of writing. Nevertheless, by 15 January 1783, Mozart had placed an announcement in the Wiener Zeitung, offering all three concertos for sale in finely produced manuscript copies, available on subscription:

Herr Kapellmeister Mozart herewith apprizes the highly honoured public of the publication of three new, recently finished pianoforte concertos. These 3 concertos, which may be performed either with a large orchestra with wind instruments or merely a quattro, viz. with 2 violins, 1 viola and violoncello, will not appear until the beginning of April this year, and will be issued (finely copied and supervised by himself) only to those who have subscribed thereto. The present [announcement] serves to give the further news that subscription tickets may be had of him for four ducats (Deutsch, 1965, p.212). ²