Piano Concerto No. 24 (Mozart)

Piano Concerto in C minor
No. 24
by W. A. Mozart
Pianoforte by Johann Andreas Stein (Augsburg, 1775) – Berlin, Musikinstrumenten-Museum
Catalogue	K. 491
Style	Classical period
Composed	1786 (1786): Vienna
Published	1800 (1800)
Movements	3 (Allegro Larghetto Allegretto)
Scoring	Keyboard orchestra

The Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491, is a concerto composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for keyboard (usually a piano or fortepiano) and orchestra. Mozart composed the concerto in the winter of 1785–1786, finishing it on 24 March 1786, three weeks after the completion of the Piano Concerto in A major. As Mozart intended to perform the work himself, the soloist's part was not fully written down. The premiere was in early April 1786 at the Burgtheater in Vienna. Chronologically the work is the twentieth of Mozart's 23 original piano concertos.

The work is one of only two minor-key piano concertos that Mozart composed, the other being the No. 20 in D minor. None of Mozart's other piano concertos features a larger array of instruments: the work is scored for strings, woodwinds, horns, trumpets and timpani. The concerto consists of three movements. The first, Allegro, is in sonata form and is longer than any opening movement of Mozart's earlier concertos. The second movement, Larghetto, is in the relative major of E-flat and features a strikingly simple principal theme. The final movement, Allegretto, returns to the home key of C minor and presents a theme followed by eight variations.

The work is one of Mozart's most advanced compositions in the concerto genre. Its early admirers included Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms. Musicologist Arthur Hutchings considered it to be Mozart's greatest piano concerto.