Oboe Concerto (Mozart)

Oboe Concerto
by W. A. Mozart
The young composer, a 1777 copy of a lost painting
Key	C major
Catalogue	K. 314
Genre	Concerto
Style	Classical period
Composed	1777 (1777)
Movements	Three (Allegro aperto, Adagio ma non troppo, Rondo – Allegro)
Scoring	Oboe orchestra

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Oboe Concerto in C major, K. 314, was composed in the spring or summer of 1777, for the oboist Giuseppe Ferlendis (1755–1802) from Bergamo. In 1778, Mozart re-worked it as a concerto for flute in D major. The concerto is a widely studied piece for both instruments and is one of the more important concertos in the oboe repertoire.

As with his Flute Concerto No. 1, the piece is arranged for a standard set of orchestral strings - (violin I/II, viola and cello/double-bass doubling the bass line), two oboes, and two horns in D/C. The first and last 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:

The Flute Concerto No. 2 in D Major is an adaptation of the original oboe concerto. Dutch flautist Ferdinand De Jean (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, De Jean did not pay Mozart for this concerto because it was based on the oboe concerto.