Violin Concerto No.2 in D major, K.211

Nobody knows exactly why, or how, Mozart wrote a series of five violin concertos in just eight months in 1775. Even allowing for the possibility that the first of them, K.207, was written two years earlier (as some authorities believe), it was an extraordinary achievement for any composer let alone one who was not yet twenty. It could be that - on the advice of his politically astute father - he was ostentatiously making up for his recent neglect of his duties as Konzertmeister in Salzburg while trying to find a better job in Munich.

The other intriguing question about the violin concertos is not how the young composer was able to write so well for the instrument - he was himself an accomplished violinist and might well have had himself in mind as soloist - but how he could have developed so enormously in the short time it took him to write at least four of them. It is only because of the extraordinary advance made by the last three that they are far more frequently performed than the first two, which would be cherished items in the repertoire if they didn’t have the others to compete with. The Concerto in D, K.211, is a beautifully proportioned work most engagingly scored for solo violin with two oboes, two horns and strings.

While the melodic material of K.211 might not be as distinctive as that of the later works, it is both abundant and well varied. At the beginning of the first movement the orchestra introduces a suitably imposing fanfare-like first theme and a contrastingly intimate second theme - both of which are taken up by the solo violin on its first entry together with another theme reserved for the soloist alone. The slow movement is a melodious aria for solo violin, which is inspired to develop a particularly expressive variant of the main theme just before recalling it in its definitive version not long before the end of the movement. The most characteristic melody in the whole work is the cheerful tune introduced by the soloist at the beginning of the last movement. As the main theme of a rondo construction, it makes three further appearances, between which the violin seems almost to improvise three entertaining little episodes.

Gerald Larner ©2004