Mozart, WA :: Andante in C major KV 315 (285e)

Andante in C major KV 315 (285e)

Mozart, WA

Throughout his career Mozart had a special feeling for the wind instruments. Not only did he add a distinctive flavor to the wind band in his orchestral music indeed, his writing for winds became a defining and inimitable feature of his music he also wrote compositions for wind players in his circle of friends.

Oddly, the only wind instrument he couldn t bear in a solo setting was the flute. Then again, as you know, I get quite put off whenever I have to write for an instrument I can t stand : thus the excuse he sent his father from Mannheim (letter of 14 February 1778), where he was staying at the home of the Wendlings, a family of Mannheim musicians. There Mozart made the acquaintance of a wealthy Dutchman (or, as he called him, an Indian ) named Ferdinand Dejean (1731 1797), who was also an amateur flautist, and agreed to give him three small, easy and brief little concertos and a couple of quattros for the flute.

But the commission was destined to remain incomplete: the only flute concertos we know from Mozart s pen are the Concerto in G major, K. 313 (285c), to which he later added the Andante in C major, K. 315 (285e), and his reworking of the Oboe Concerto in C major into the Flute Concerto in D major, K. 314 (285d). It thus transpired that Mozart received only 96 of the 200 gulden that Dejean had promised him, a fact acidly remarked upon in several of his father s letters.

The Andante in C major, K. 315, resembles a serenade and seems especially well-suited to the limited technical skills of its patron. Mozart may have written it as an alternative to the more demanding slow movement of the Concerto in G major, K. 313.

Barenreiter, as part of this authoritative performing edition, also supplies candenzas by Rachel Brown and Karl Engel.