Piano Concerto No. 6 (Mozart)

Piano Concerto in B-flat major
No. 6
by W. A. Mozart
The young composer, a 1777 copy of a lost painting
Catalogue	K. 238
Style	Classical period
Composed	1776 (1776)
Movements	3 (Allegro aperto Andante un poco adagio Rondeau: Allegro)
Scoring	Piano orchestra

The Piano Concerto No. 6 in B-flat major, K. 238, was composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in January 1776. His Concerto No. 7 (K. 242) for three pianos and his Concerto No. 8 (K. 246) in C major would follow within three months. The three works share what Cuthbert Girdlestone refers to as a galant style.

The work is structured in three movements:

The work is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two horns, solo piano, and strings. It is a lightly textured work from early in Mozart's career. The United States Library of Congress holds the autograph score. Mozart had intended to publish the score after he composed it, but it did not appear in print until after his death, in 1793. He did, however, perform the work, in Munich in 1777, and in Augsburg on 22 October 1777. His student Rose Cannabich performed the work in Mannheim on 13 February 1778.Angela Hewitt observes that the first performances of the work were probably on a harpsichord rather than a fortepiano.

The first movement, in sonata form, is marked Allegro aperto. "Aperto" literally means "open", an attribute often used in Mozart's early concertos, and while the exact meaning Mozart intended is unknown, it conveys "radiance and gaiety", as the pianist Angela Hewitt notes. The development offers an episode of minor mode arpeggios and broken octaves in the piano, contrasted by "plaintive intervals" of the oboe. It is in the development, and only there, that Girdlestone considers that the movement "gives us a glimpse of the true Mozart", as the recapitulation reprises the "well-bred, aristocratic good temper" of the movement's opening. Mozart provided a short cadenza.