ABSTRACT
By the time Mozart had composed the first of his original keyboard concertos in December 1773, he had many aesthetic and stylistic sources on which to draw. His natural gift for character portrayal had deepened as a result of his considerable experience as an opera and aria composer. He now proceeded to carry this ability over to the concerto genre: indeed, each of Mozart’s concertos possesses a distinct persona. In his concertante vocal and instrumental works Mozart successfully reconciled virtuosity with the needs of dramatic expression, deploying a fluid rhythmic language and an increasingly voluptuous orchestral fabric.
