Oboe Concerto in C Major

Mozart’s Oboe Concerto is a relatively early work, written during the summer of 1777 for the oboist Giuseppe Ferlendis, who at that time was a member of the Court Orchestra in Salzburg. Yet Ferlendis apparently never played the Concerto, having left Salzburg in September of the same year to take up an appointment in Munich. Meanwhile, Mozart embarked on an extended visit to Mannheim, whose Court Orchestra was widely regarded as the finest in Europe. There he met the oboist Friedrich Ramm and gave him the score to his recently composed Concerto. Writing about this event in a letter to his father, Mozart reported that Ramm was overcome with joy at receiving such a gift and thereafter eagerly promoted the work at every opportunity. The Oboe Concerto is indeed beautifully written for the solo instrument, which throughout its three movements engages in delightful interaction with a modestly sized orchestra. The operatic provenance of Mozart’s musical language is particularly evident in the warmly expressive lyrical writing of the “Adagio non troppo” second movement and in the spirited recurring theme of the finale, which Mozart later reused in his comic opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail.