The Piano Concerto in B-flat major K.595 is the last of twenty-one concertos that Mozart created for piano and orchestra. It originated between the final Da Ponte opera Così fan tutte (K.588), which was premièred at the Vienna Burg Theater on 26 January 1790, and Die Zauberflöte (K.620), on which Mozart probably began work in the spring of 1791. This places it in the company of Mozart’s final pieces of chamber music, the K.589 and K.590 String Quartets and the K.593 and K.614 String Quintets, along with a multitude of occasional works, including the late cycles of dances he started writing at the beginning of 1791.
Following the ostentatious virtuosity and pomp of the “Coronation” Concerto, with which Mozart tried to recapture the good graces of the Vienna public, K.595 was more introspective. It was apparently written without a commission and with no prospects of a public performance. Its inimitable mastery may best be characterised in Winckelmann’s famous dictum on the essence of Greek art: “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur”. Yet the work also exudes a spirit of “rebellious” resignation, especially in its first movement, and the Rondo-Finale ultimately adopts a pose of urbane merriment.