Mozart - Piano Concerto No.15 in B flat Major, K. 450

The Piano Concerto No. 15 in B flat Major, KV. 450 is a concertante work for piano, or pianoforte, and orchestra by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart composed the concerto for performance at a series of concerts at the Vienna venues of the Trattnerhof and the Burgtheater in the first quarter of 1784, where he was himself the soloist in March 1784. In a letter to his father, Mozart compared this concerto with the 16th concerto in D:

"I consider them both to be concertos which make one sweat; but the B flat one beats the one in D for difficulty." Indeed, many pianists consider this to be the most difficult of all of Mozart's piano concertos. The concerto is primarily difficult from its many quick scale patterns which must be played perfectly and also from its many fast chord patterns moving up and down.

Beginning with this concerto, Mozart began to use the term "grand" to describe his concerti such as K.450 which feature a prominent and required wind section for the ensemble. The work is orchestrated for solo piano, flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, and strings. The concerto is in three movements:
1. Allegro
2. Andante in E-flat major
3. Allegro

Diana McVeigh has commented on the division of musical themes in the concerto's first movement, in the context of the relationship between soloist and orchestra. The finale follows the even rondo form. Simon Keefe has noted contemporary comments from Mozart's era on how the woodwind writing in this concerto showed a "newly intricate and sophisticated" character compared to Mozart's prior keyboard concerti.

Keefe has also analysed the character of the dialogue between the soloist and the orchestra in the concerto's first movement. Elaine Sisman has postulated that Mozart modeled the slow movement on a theme-and-variations movement from the Symphony No. 75 of Joseph Haydn.

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."

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