Much has been written about the stylistic similarities between Mozart's concertos and his operas: in both cases an individual is pitted against a collective and forced to assert himself and engage in a musical dialogue. From opera seria came the da capo form that Mozart repeatedly used in his instrumental concertos, tightening up its formal design of orchestral interludes and thematic repetitions and investing it with new dramatic possibilities through his use of key relationships. In this way he was able to give his concerto movements a logically coherent and clear design that afforded scope to the most varied moods, as may be heard in all three works in the present release: whereas the Oboe Concerto is an ebullient work, sometimes even rustic in tone, the Concerto for Flute and Harp seems, rather, to express an underlying mood of magic and romanticism. The Clarinet Concerto, finally, reflects above all the raptly infatuated and melancholic aspect of Mozart's music, an aspect underscored by the solo instrument’s basic tone quality.
But there is an even more obvious parallel between Mozart's concertos and his operas: as with many of his stage works, he often created the solo parts in his concertos with the abilities and needs of particular performers and patrons in mind. Most of his solo concertos were intended either for his own use or for very specific performers. In the case of the Oboe Concerto K. 314, for example, it was the arrival of the Italian virtuoso Giuseppe Ferlendis as a new member of the Salzburg Court Orchestra in the summer of 1777 that prompted Mozart to write this piece.
There is no evidence, however, that Ferlendis ever performed the concerto in public in Salzburg, but we do know that Mozart took the score with him when he set out in September 1777 on an extended visit to Munich, Mannheim and Paris. According to his father Leopold, the aim of this journey was "to obtain a post or to earn some money": for his gifted son, Salzburg had finally become too parochial. In Mannheim - at this date one of the leading centres of music in Europe - Mozart lost no time in introducing himself to the city's music lovers with his new Oboe Concerto. The soloist was Friedrich Ramm, the oboist with the famous Mannheim Court Orchestra, who, as Mozart told his father, played "very well" and had "a delightfully pure tone". During the months that followed, Ramm played the concerto at least five times, and it was evidentlv so popular that the amateur flautist Ferdinand Dejean asked Mozart to transcribe it for his instrument. The transcription - which involved a transposition to D major - was undertaken in Mannheim and for a long time was the only known version of the piece. Not until the 1920s did an incomplete set of earlv orchestral parts in C major resurtace in Salzburg, allowing an oboe version to be reconstructed.
In spite of all these successes, there was no post for the voting composer at the Mannheim court, and so he packed his bags and in March 1778 resumed his journey to Paris. Here things got off to a good start, and among the many commissions that Mozart received at this time was one from the Comte de Guines, a well-to-do music lover who, as Mozart wrote to tell his father, played the flute "incomparably well", while his daughter - to whom Mozart gave composition lessons with mixed results - played the harp "magnificently". The count invited Mozart to write a double concerto for flute and harp, and in responding to his request, Mozart took account of the fact that de Guines had a tail-piece on his flute that enabled him to play bottom d flat and c, two notes that Mozart does not use in any of his other works for the flute. The result is a grandiose piece in the galant style that Mozart was evidently fond of recalling in later years, as is clear from the fact that he reused the theme of the Rondeau in his Serenade Eine kleine Nachtmusik of 1787. (Such recyclings are by no means uncommon with Mozart: the Rondo theme from his Oboe Concerto reappears in 1782 in Blonde’s aria "Welche Wonne, welche Lust" from Die Entführung aus dem Serail.)
Ultimately, however, Mozart was no more able to find a professional foothold in Paris than he had done in Mannheim, and it was a contrite composer who early in 1779 returned to Salzburg to take up his now appointment as court organist. Although Mozart now had a secure income, in his heart of hearts he considered this step "the greatest folly in the world". Within two years the situation had degenerated to the point where he was literally booted out of the Archbishop's employment by Count Arco and left to fend for himself in Vienna as the first freelance composer in the history of music.
Here Mozart appeared lo thrive, and his contacts with famous and gifted colleagues provided him with new ideas aplenty. His acquaintance with the clarinettist Anton Stadler, for example, prompted him to take a closer interest in an instrument for which he had long felt a particular predileciton. Through Stadler, Mozart was introduced to the hasset clarinet, an instrument that Stadler himself had developed: unlike the basset-horn (an alto clarinet in F), the basset clarinet is a clarinet in A, whose range is extended downwards by four semitones to written c. It was for this instrument that Mozart wrote the present Concerto in A major K. 622, which was also the last Concerto that he ever composed. He started to write it in the late 1780s as a concerto in G major for the basset-horn, but then revised and completed it in the... (incompleted)