Violin Concerto in D major, K.218

Had Mozart written violin concertos in his Viennese maturity, he might well have surpassed even the best of the five he completed in Salzburg in his late teens. It is doubtful, however, that he would have written anything more engaging in personality or more entertaining then the fourth of those early examples, the Violin Concerto in D major, K.218.

What the first movement lacks in structural proportion it compensates for in the abundance of its melodic material - a festive first subject and a contrastingly graceful second subject introduced by the orchestra, an interesting new idea occurring to the solo violin between its repeat presentations of those two themes and a whole series of asides spontaneously extending the exposition. Curiously enough, the virtuoso development section has little to do with any of the main themes, the first of which has no place in the recapitulation either.

In the slow movement, too, after the violin has politely taken up the theme introduced by the orchestra, it introduces two quite irresistible melodies of its own, one gently accompanied by strings, the other more provocatively engaging in a delightful little conversation with the oboe. There is no development but simply a repeat of the exposition, a cadenza and a coda.

The most entertaining of the three movements is the last, a French-style Rondeau that alternates two contrasting tempi and two kinds of dance, an Andante grazioso gavotte with an Allegro ma non troppo gigue. But that is not all. At the point where, according to symmetrical expectations, the gavotte should appear for the third time the ever resourceful soloist introduces a tune known as the “ballo strasburghesi,” at one point imitating a bagpipe by supplying his own drone harmony while accompanied by first violins in parallel sixths. Known for this colourful reason as the “Strasbourg Concerto,” it was apparently the composer-violinist’s own favourite.

Gerald Larner©2002