The Piano Concerto No. 13 in C major, K.

Köchel-Verzeichnis

The Köchel-Verzeichnis is a complete, chronological catalogue of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart which was originally created by Ludwig von Köchel. It is abbreviated K or KV. For example, Mozart's Requiem in D minor was, according to Köchel's counting, the 626th piece Mozart composed....

 415 (387b) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

 was composed in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 in 1782–83. It is the third of the first three full concertos Mozart composed for his subscription concerts.

It consists of three movements

Movement (music)

A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...

:

1. Allegro, in C major
   C major
   C major is a musical major scale based on C, with pitches C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. Its key signature has no flats/sharps.Its relative minor is A minor, and its parallel minor is C minor....
   
    and common (C) time
   Time signature
   The time signature is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats are in each measure and which note value constitutes one beat....
   
   
2. Andante, in F major
   F major
   F major is a musical major scale based on F, consisting of the pitches F, G, A, B, C, D, and E. Its key signature has one flat . It is by far the oldest key signature with an accidental, predating the others by hundreds of years...
   
   and 3/4 time
3. Allegro, in C major and 6/8 time

Instrumentation: Solo — Piano; Orchestra: 2 Oboes, 2 Bassoons + 2 Horns, 2 Trumpets + Timpani + Strings

Assessment and reception

This concerto has long had an ambiguous reputation. The first movement starts with a quiet theme, similar to that of the later C major concerto No. 21, but introduced fugetto. The orchestral introduction builds to an impressive tutti, but many writers, including Hutchings and Girdlestone, have considered that after the entry of the piano this early promise is somewhat dissipated. The piano part itself consists of passages that do not integrate well with the fugetto treatment of the ritornellic material, and, as Hutchings comments, the result is that the "whole is less than the sum of the parts".