Alan Loveday, Iona Brown, Carmel Kaine, Academy of St Martin in the Fields & Sir Neville Marriner - Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 3; Concertone (Remastered) (2026) [Hi-Res]

The Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major, K. 216, was composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Salzburg in 1775 when he was 19 years old. In a letter to his father, Mozart called it the "Strasbourg Concerto". Researchers believe this epithet comes from the motive in the third movement's Allegretto in the central section, a local dance that already had appeared as a musette-imitating tune in a symphony by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf.

Mozart simply wrote "Concertone" (large concert) on the autograph score. An Italian term which meant more than one soloist with an accompanying orchestra, similar to a symphonie concertante. Leopold Mozart also called the work a concertone in his copy. The title page of the score only refers to two solo violins and orchestra. But the music contains notable solo writing for the oboe, cello and with a few passages for divided violas and for a solo double bass.

One of Mozart's earliest concertos, the Concertone has similarities in form to the earlier concerto grosso form, as well as contemporary concertante works, such as Joseph Haydn's symphonies nos. 6 to 8, "Le Matin", "Le Midi" and "Le Soir", and similar styled works by J. C. Bach. This form of writing was popular in Paris at the time. The flautist Johann Baptist Wendling was enthusiastic about the Concertone and arranged to have it performed in Paris or possibly Mannheim. Wendling exclaimed "it is just the thing for Paris". The Mozart scholar Alexander Hyatt King remarked "a hybrid work in which the old genre got a new soul ... the juxtaposition of baroque concerto grosso instruments mixes well with the new galant style”.

Alan Loveday, violin
Iona Brown, violin
Carmel Kaine, violin
Academy of St Martin in the Fields
Sir Neville Marriner, conductor

Digitally remastered