Julian Haylock sends a couple of false pretenders packing as he searches out the best recordings of Mozart\u2019s violin concertos <\/p>
Little more than 50 years ago, it was widely thought Mozart<\/a> had composed eight violin concertos. Most notorious of all was the so-called Adelaide<\/i> (\u2018No. 8\u2019), which Marius Casadesus (uncle of pianist Robert) claimed in 1933 to have restored from an authentic two-stave manuscript.<\/span><\/p>\n It was duly published, premiered by Jelly d\u2019Aranyi and even recorded by Yehudi Menuhin<\/a><\/strong> before, in 1977, Casadesus confessed it was all a hoax and entirely his own work. \u2018No. 6\u2019 in E flat was claimed by Mozart\u2019s near-contemporary Johann Friedrich Eck to have been played to him by the composer. Rigorous stylistic analysis and comparison with Eck\u2019s own music in the late 1970s revealed the Mozart story was almost certainly a product of Eck\u2019s colourful imagination.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018No. 7\u2019 in D K271a \u2013 sometimes known as the Kolb<\/i>, after Salzburg violinist Franz Xaver Kolb \u2013 remains a subject for heated debate. The problem here is that it is indisputably a fine piece, full of memorable ideas, so much so that several experts have conceded it could at least in part be by Mozart. The jury is still out, the official verdict being that its authorship is \u2018doubtful\u2019 rather than merely \u2018spurious\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> \n
So how many violin concertos did Mozart actually compose?<\/h2>\n