Leonid Kogan - Mozart: Mendelssohn Violin Concertos

Mozart wrote 27 piano concertos but only six for the violin. This discrepancy in numbers is to be explained by the fact that his favorite instrument was the piano on which he was indeed one of the great virtuosos of his time while the solo violin held only a limited and temporary attraction for him. The first five violin concertos were composed in Salzburg in 1775 when Mozart was a boy of 19, and the sixth followed two years later after which his interest in the genre ceased. The precise occasions for which he wrote them is unknown - possibly for his own use, but, more probably, for Gaetano Brunetti who was the leader of the Salzburg court orchestra.