Rondo (Allegro) from Serenade in D major K.250 (“Haffner’)

Mozart’s Serenade in D was composed not for Vienna but for Salzburg, where it was first performed in the garden of the Haffner family home during the celebrations of the wedding of Marie Elisabeth Haffner to Franz Xaver Späth in July 1776. Like three earlier orchestral serenades written for Salzburg occasions, it contains a miniature violin concerto which the composer probably intended to play himself. Certainly, the concerto movements in the “Haffner” Serenade indulge the soloist to such an extent that no violinist could easily resist them. The last of those movements, a rondo, offers no fewer than four opportunities to insert a cadenza – the first three to welcome the return of the delightfully skittish main theme, the last to make way for one last display of virtuosity just before the end. In the absence of cadenzas by Mozart himself, incidentally, it is up to the soloist to provide his own.