Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Violin concertos

Mozart completed his five violin concertos before his 20th birthday - with the exception of the first in B flat major (1773), all within a few months in 1775. While the piano concerto in particular shaped Mozart's entire creative period, he devoted himself to the violin concerto early on, concentrated in terms of time - and then never again. In this soirée, these violin concertos also provide an insight into Mozart's fundamental approach to the solo concerto genre in accordance with the latest fashions in his contemporary creative world.

The sonata movement as the defining formal model of the style current at the time and the principle of alternating tutti ritornello and solo episode, still alive from the Baroque period, rub up against each other structurally, confronting the composer with resistance and provoking creative solutions at the same time. This seems to suit Mozart as a composer who likes to string together several musical ideas within seemingly homogeneous formal thematic blocks in a seemingly loose, one would often say "cheerful way" - and at the same time escapes arbitrariness by loosely associating, linking and interweaving them. In this way, he creates a kind of very personal musical speech, and with its journey through the five concertos, the soirée aims to make us aware of and feel Mozart's way of taking us by the hand and communicating with us in a narrative way.

Introduction by Felix Wolters to the concerts with Mozart's violin concertos on June 18 and 19, 2025.