About this edition
Composed in December 1786 and standing as the last of Mozart's mature concertos before the great trilogy of his final years, the Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, K.503 is a work of imperial breadth and symphonic ambition. Its expansive first movement — among the longest Mozart ever wrote in concerto form — unfolds with a grandeur that prefigures Beethoven, while the central Andante offers some of the most serenely beautiful writing in the composer's keyboard output. Long admired by conductors and pianists for its architectural mastery and its unusual rhythmic motif (famously echoing the Marseillaise), K.503 occupies a singular place in the concerto repertoire.
This score reproduces the text from Mozarts Werke, the landmark complete edition issued by Breitkopf & Härtel of Leipzig between 1877 and 1883. The concerto appears in Serie XVI (Concerte für das Pianoforte), Band 4, No. 25, pages 1–68 (185–252 in the volume's continuous pagination), bearing plate number W.A.M. 503 and dated 1879. Prepared by leading nineteenth-century Mozart scholars and engraved to the highest standards of its day, the Mozarts Werke edition served as the foundational scholarly text for generations of performers and editors, and remains a touchstone reference even after the publication of the modern Neue Mozart-Ausgabe.
About this edition:
- Full orchestral score (conductor's score with solo piano part)
- Page size: 8.5 x 11 inches, suitable for study and reference
- Faithfully reproduced from the 1879 Breitkopf & Härtel engraving
- Sourced from a public domain historical edition
- Published by Purple 4R Publishing
This volume makes a historic and scholarly edition of Mozart's K.503 readily available to today's conductors, pianists, students, and enthusiasts. Because the original 1879 publication has long since entered the public domain, we are delighted to bring this beautiful score back into print for a new generation of musicians to study, perform, and enjoy.
