Mozart - Sinfonia concertante in E flat major KV Anh. I/9 (297b)

We know from letters to his father that during his stay in Paris in 1778 Mozart wrote a Sinfonia concertante for flute, oboe, horn, bassoon and orchestra for a quartet of wind soloists who were also there – Mozart’s autograph was lost, the work is missing.

In the 19th century, a copy of a Sinfonia concertante in E-flat for oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon and orchestra appeared, for which Mozart’s authorship was claimed and which – despite the different instrumentation of the wind quartet – was linked to the Sinfonia concertante, which was believed to be lost has been brought. For a long time, the work was considered genuine, but vehement doubts have been raised about its authenticity for around 25 years, which relate not only to the scoring of the soloist quartet but also to the orchestral parts.

Robert Levin's reconstruction is based on the assumption that the setting of the solo parts is genuine in its germ and has been re-instrumented by a foreign arranger (flute to oboe, oboe to clarinet). Levin considers the orchestral parts to be fake. In his reconstruction, Levin restored the instrumentation of the soloist quartet with flute, oboe, horn and bassoon mentioned in Mozart's letters and rewrote the orchestral parts. Thorough analysis of Mozart's style and an intimate knowledge of Mozart's writing enabled Levin to take the risk of this reconstruction. It is available as rental material (BA 7137) and is part of the popular repertoire of solo wind instruments.