Oboe Concerto (Mozart)

As with his Flute Concerto No. 1, the piece is orchestrated for a standard string section (violin I/II, viola and cello/double bass doubling the bass line), two oboes, and two horns in D/C.[3] The first and third movements are in the home key of C major, while the second movement is in the subdominant key of F major.

The piece is divided into three movements:

1. Allegro aperto
2. Adagio non troppo
3. Rondo : Allegretto

The Flute Concerto No. 2 in D major, K. 314 (285d) is an adaptation of the original oboe concerto. Dutch flautist Ferdinand Dejean (1731–1797) commissioned Mozart for four flute quartets and three flute concerti, of which Mozart only completed three quartets and one new flute concerto. Instead of creating a new second concerto, Mozart rearranged the oboe concerto he had written a year earlier as the second flute concerto, although with substantial changes for it to fit with what the composer deemed flute-like. However, Dejean did not pay Mozart for this concerto because it was based on the oboe concerto.[2][4]

In the 1800s and early 1900s, the oboe concerto was presumed to be lost, while the flute concerto in D remained known. The oboe concerto was rediscovered by Bernhard Paumgartner in 1920, who found a handwritten set of parts in the Salzburg Mozarteum archives, and recognized the similarity with the flute concerto in D.[2][1] Alfred Einstein, editor of the third edition of the Köchel catalogue (1937), noted that both a D major and a C major copy of the K. 314 concerto existed in the library of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. From this and also from Paumgartner's discovery, Einstein concluded that the concerto was originally for oboe. The priority of the oboe version is supported by Mozart's letters, as well as various evidence from the music itself. For example, according to Einstein in his Mozart: His Character, His Work and Paumgartner in his Mozart-Jahrbuch, the violins in the D major version never go below the A on the G string, suggesting that C major was the original key and D major was a transposition.[2]

No autograph score has survived. The only known autograph fragment consists of nine measures discovered in 1971, partly duplicating the Oboe Concerto in C major and partly proceeding with previously unknown material.[2]

The first movement of Mozart's unfinished Oboe Concerto in F major, K. 293 (1778) has been completed by the Mozart scholar and pianist Robert D. Levin, and by the musicologist William Drabkin in 2015.[5]

• Oboe Concerto in C KV 314 (285d): Score and critical report (in German) in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe
• Flute Concerto No. 2 in D KV 314 (285d): Score and critical report (in German) in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe
• Performance of Flute Concerto by the Gardner Chamber Orchestra with soloist Paula Robison from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (MP3)
• Manning, Dwight (1996). "Cadenzas and Eingänge for the Mozart Oboe Concerto, K. 314: An Annotated Bibliography" (PDF). International Double Reed Society and University of Colorado Boulder, College of Music. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 March 2005. Retrieved 1 May 2013.