Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Konzert C-Dur KV 299 (297c)

Easily playable, simply handed down

Mozart went into raptures with his father: the Comte de Guines played the flute 'incomparably', his daughter 'magnifique the harp', and so the composer apparently had no inhibitions to write a double concerto for this extravagant instrumentation in Paris in 1778, although he had shortly before announced to his father that he 'could not stand' the flute. It is peculiar that Mozart then penned a distinctive, rather easily playable work - should he, for whatever reason, have exaggerated in the description of the technical abilities of his principals? The source situation is clear: there is an autograph which is authoritative in every respect and which can be transposed without contradiction into a modern Urtext edition even in the distinction between staccato dots and strokes.

Cadenzas in the piano reduction by Robert D. Levin