Piano Concerto in C Minor K. 491

Composed under pressure, edited in peace: K. 491

In spring 1786 Mozart was under pressure: he had only two weeks between the composition and first performance of the C-minor Piano Concerto K. 491. It is no wonder that the autograph was written very hastily and the piano part occasionally only sketched.

Mozart, who played the solo part at the premiere, still thought about it later. During subsequent revisions of the piano part, he caused a certain amount of confusion through corrected versions and parallel versions. Editor Ernst Herttrich thus faced great challenges when preparing the Breitkopf Urtext edition, especially since printed editions were only published posthumously.

But since they contain readings that play an important role in the reception of the work, they were included in the new edition as variants.