Piano Concerto no. 23 in A major, K. 488

Mozart wrote Piano Concerto No. 23 in 1786, two years after the Seventeenth Concerto. It belongs to the period in which he used the concerto as the ideal meeting place between his identities as pianist and composer. The work became one of his most celebrated contributions to the genre; its slow movement, in particular, acquired an independent fame and is often heard among the best-known pages of classical music. Yet its beauty is inseparable from the concerto’s larger balance of intimacy, clarity and dramatic dialogue between soloist and orchestra.