I declare to you before God, and as an honest man, that your son is the greatest composer I know, either personally or by name. –Joseph Haydn, to Leopold Mozart.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) showed such a prodigious talent for music in his early childhood that his father, also a composer, dropped all other ambitions and devoted himself to educating the boy and exhibiting his accomplishments. Between ages six and fifteen, Mozart was on tour over half the time. By 1762, he was a virtuoso on the clavier—an early keyboard instrument and predecessor of the piano—and soon became a good organist and violinist as well. He produced his first minuets at the age of six, and his first symphony just before his ninth birthday, his first oratorio at eleven, and his first opera at twelve. His final output would total more than 600 compositions. Much has already been said and studied in the popular media about Mozart’s roguish lifestyle and apprehension of conformity. It was this aspect of his personality that never won him the support of royalty or the church, which, at that time, was critical to any composer’s survival. As such, Mozart died young, ill, poor, and relatively unappreciated … only to become the mostly widely acknowledged orchestral composer in history.
Mozart completed his Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat Major, K595 on January 5, 1791, about one year before his death, and the piece was premiered on March 4 of the same year. It followed two years of extreme financial hardship that threatened his marriage. Gone are the idyllic grace and subtle humor of Mozart’s happier days. Instead, we hear a wisp of introspection or perhaps even resignation. As the least virtuosic of all Mozart’s concertos, K595 requires a depth and invention from its soloist beyond all of his concertos.