Mozart - Piano Sonata No.3 in B flat Major, K.281

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 3 in B flat major, K 281 (189f) (1774) is a sonata in three movements:
1. Allegro 00:00
2. Andante amoroso 04:40
3. Rondo (allegro) 10:57
A typical performance takes about 14 minutes.

This piano sonata is one of the most virtuosic pieces Mozart ever composed, written during the visit Mozart paid to Munich for the production of La finta giardiniera from late 1774 to the beginning of the following March.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 -- 5 December 1791), baptised as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era.

Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty.

At 17, he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position, always composing abundantly.

While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of his death. The circumstances of his early death have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons.

He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, and his influence on subsequent Western art music is profound; Beethoven composed his own early works in the shadow of Mozart, and Joseph Haydn wrote that "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years."

Creative Commons license: Public Domain.