Following several unhappy years of sporadic employment at the Salzburg court, Mozart was dismissed, in his own words, “with a kick on my arse,” in the spring of 1781. This left the ambitious young man free to pursue his fortune in Vienna, Europe’s musical epicenter. The ensuing years were some of the busiest and most successful of Mozart’s brief life. He married and became a father as well as a Freemason. His performances caught the eye of Emperor Joseph II, who commissioned Mozart’s opera The Abduction from the Seraglio.

The mid-1780s were an especially fecund period for his piano works. In early 1784 he composed the first of his 12 major Vienna piano concertos, some of the most important works in the genre. When he composed the Rondo in January 1786, he was in the midst of writing his opera The Marriage of Figaro.

Despite its name, this is not a rondo at all, but an exceedingly charming sonata-form movement. Mozart builds the piece around a descending five-note figure, one he employed in multiple works. He playfully presents the theme in new keys and textures, inserting glittering chromatic scales and swapping the melody and broken-chord accompaniment between hands before ending with a gentle coda.

—Andrew McIntyre © 2026