Excluding the long hiatus of almost a year and a half during which he traveled through central Europe with his mother in search of better airs, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had to put up with his rude patron, Prince-Archbishop Colloredo, for nine years, from August 1772 to May 1781, when the final break occurred after a harsh debate.
From the beginning relations were strained, and from then on they only worsened to the point that the prince-archbishop, during an interview granted to Leopold Mozart in 1777, went so far as to point out to Leopold that his son "knew nothing and what he should do was to go to Naples to learn music at a conservatory".
The six violin concertos
Nevertheless, stifled and mistreated by an ungracious patron in the provincial environment of Salzburg, Mozart produced many of his best works there, some of them composed at an astonishing speed. This is the case of the only six violin concertos indebted to Mozart. Today as true masterpieces, No. 3, No. 4, and No. 5 were written in just four months, between September and December 1775, while the vassal Mozart was composing without pause music for religious services and various special occasions.
Concerto for violin and orchestra No. 5, in A major, K. 219
With Concerto No. 5, somewhat crudely called the "Turkish Concerto" (because of the rondo), Mozart managed to create something very much in the line of what the 19th century would come to know as the concerto for solo instrument and orchestra. Although openly framed in the tradition of the "classical" chamber concerto, its long extension -around 25 minutes- and its great technical demand reveal that a new role has been assigned to the violin as a solo instrument. Not a few concertos of similar stature were written at the same time, but none managed to survive the test of time with the gallantry that Mozart's No. 5 has done.
Movements:
00 Allegro aperto - Adagio - Allegro aperto - The only instance in Mozart's concerto repertoire in which the soloist makes his first entrance with a brief adagio independent of the orchestral exposition (Allegro aperto: somewhat more majestic than an ordinary allegro).
10:56 Adagio - One of Mozart's longest slow movements, with a beautiful passage in the middle section.
21:54 Rondo - Tempo di Minuetto - The best-known movement of the work, with an alla turca section, in the prevailing fashion of the time and which Mozart would replicate three years later by introducing a rondo alla turca, the famous "Turkish March", in the piano sonata in A major.
Belarusian violinist Artiom Shishkov is accompanied by the Belgian ensemble Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie, conducted by the German maestro Michael Hofstetter.
