A recently discovered piano concerto, believed to be one of the earliest works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, will be performed for the first time today in Salzburg, the city where the composer was born.

Experts believe that the composition, entitled Allegro di Wolffgango Mozart, was written by the child prodigy at some time between the ages of 6 and 10.

The handwritten manuscript was found in a book of music bought by the archdiocese of Salzburg. It contains 118 other compositions, mainly minuets, preludes and versets, by Mozart and prominent contemporary composers.

According to Ernst Hintermeier, the director of the archdiocese archive, who was the first to establish the authorship, the piece was written by the Austrian composer between 1763 and 1766. Mozart was born in 1756 in Salzburg and died in 1791 in Vienna.

“This is a wonderful discovery and hopefully a great attribution towards the Mozart research. I bought it on behalf of the archive of the archdiocese from private owners, who had no knowledge of its value. After a close examination of the manuscript it became apparent that it contains an entirely unknown work by the young Mozart,” Dr Hintermeier told The Times. “It was really an exciting discovery.”

The date of the book was in part established using its watermark, that of Johann Sigismund Hofmann, a paper- maker whose products were used widely in the 1750s and the 1760s and known to be favoured by Mozart and his father, Leopold. Another clue to its authenticity lies in the discovery that one of two authors of the work was signed as Georg Joseph Paris, a contemporary of Mozart who lived in Salzburg from 1700 to 1760.

Mozart experts who inspected the manuscript said that the complexity of the score and the characteristic arrangements suggested strongly that it was indeed an early Mozart composition. They said it bore striking similarities to other early works by the composer.

Ulrich Leisinger, who heads the research department of the Salzburg-based International Mozart Foundation, said that he saw no reason to doubt the authorship of the newly found Allegro.

“The context, as well as the music, strongly suggests that the piece can be attributed to the young Mozart,” Dr Leisinger said.

The newly discovered piece will shed new light on the early development of the wünderkind, according to Dr Hintermeier. “There are not many such pieces from the very early youth of Mozart and it now allows us to learn more about that stage of his development,” he said.

“One sees that, even at that incredibly young age, he already had a remarkably mature command of musical expression.”

The piece will be performed today in the elegant Knight’s Hall of the former residence of the princes of Salzburg, a traditional concert venue in the baroque centre of Salzburg where Mozart is believed to have played his first concert at the age of 7.

The piece, and other works from the book of music, will be played on harpsichord by Florian Birsak, the keyboard player and university lecturer.

In Austria, the first contemporary performance of the composition is regarded as a grand finale to the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth. “I can’t think of a better way to end the Mozart year,” Dr Hintermeier said.

Earlier this month the full musical score of Mozart’s entire opus was made available on the internet by the International Mozart Foundation.

Boy genius

Died, hugely in debt, on December 5, 1791, at the age of 35, having written over 600 compositions, including 20 operas

Source: The Mozart Project

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