Symphonies No. 25 in G minor, K. 183 and No. 29 in A major, K. 201

These nine symphonies were composed by Mozart between 1773 and 1774, after he and his father returned to Salzburg following their third Italian tour. The manuscripts were once bound in a book by Leopold Mozart. His hand-written contents page lists each work along with details of its scoring and the opening bars from its first movement. Written when Mozart was seventeen and eighteen years old, all nine are superb, but two stand out as masterworks fundamental to the modern repertoire: No. 25 (K. 183), the first of Mozart’s two great G-­ minor symphonies, and Symphony No. 29 in A Major (K. 201). These are composing manuscripts, not later fair copies, yet they are written in a confident, fluent hand, with few corrections. This is typical of Mozart—he often had his ideas well worked out before putting pen to paper.