Sinfonia Concertante for Four Winds

In April 1778, Mozart wrote to his father from Paris about the sinfonia concertante he was writing for performance at the Concert Spirituel naming the four virtuoso soloists who were to play.

[1] They were Johan Wendling (flute), Friedrich Ramm (Oboe), Giovanni Punto (horn) and Georg Wenzl Ritter (bassoon).

The work consists of three movements: Mozart is known through letters[6] and concert announcements to have written a sinfonia concertante for flute, oboe, horn, and bassoon, the original score of which is lost.

Sadie thought that a sufficient reason for the homotonal character of the work might be to avoid a natural horn crook change and retune between movements.

However, Richard Maunder points out that all of Mozart's authentic horn concerti use a different key for the slow movement if there is one, without requiring a crook change.

This transcription process would have required the music for the three woodwind instruments to have been redistributed to accommodate the substitution of the clarinet for the original oboe part.

Maunder suggests that it is more likely that the Sinfonia Concertante is a forgery of an eighteenth-century work, dating from 1820–1830; in support of this theory, he quotes Levin as noting that the clarinet part is written in a style unseen before the early 19th century, but that its upper range is unusually restricted.

Noteworthy wind passages are in the fifteenth and seventeenth piano concertos, with memorable dialogues with the soloist; flute, oboe and bassoon.

[16] In opera there are many arias with similar woodwind and horn passages, such as Fiordiligi's "Per pietà, ben mio, perdona" from Così fan tutte.

The aria Se il padre perdei from Idomeneo uses the same four wind instruments as the lost Paris work, is in E-flat and was written for the same Mannheim soloists.