Piano Sonata in F major K.332 (1783?)

Although the Sonata in F major K.332 was long thought to have been composed in Paris in 1778, it is now considered far more likely to have been written with the Sonatas in C K.330 and A K.331 during Mozart’s visit to Salzburg with Constanze in 1783 - either as a present for Nannerl, who was in no way reconciled to her brother’s marriage, or as teaching material for his pupils in Vienna. Certainly, the three works were published within three months of the Mozarts’ return to Vienna.

What Mozart’s piano pupils would have made of the Sonata in F, if indeed it was intended for them, it is difficult to imagine. The first movement presents no serious technical difficulty but from an interpretative point of view, with its dramatic plunge into D minor soon after its charming opening and, not much later, its eccentrically emphasised rhythmic accents - which are also the main source of interest in the development section - it must have been more than a little puzzling. If, on the other hand, they were working from the edition just published by Artaria, they would not have had to worry about devising stylish decorations for the reprise of the slow movement, since the embellishments missing from the manuscript are printed in full here, presumably with the composer’s approval and perhaps even as he himself would have played them. The major problem for the pupils, though presumably not for a musician as accomplished as Nannerl, would have been the last movement, which offers an extraordinary conflict between virtuoso toccata figuration on the one hand and classical sonata-form material on the other.