Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Sonatas for Piano and Violin

The genre of piano and violin sonata interested Mozart from an early age – before turning eleven he had already published sixteen such works, as his Op 1-4.
Modelled on the sonatas by Schubert, most of them rely heavily on sequential repetition and Alberti bass figures. The violin is clearly secondary – it mostly doubles the piano part, with occasional imitative passages.
In 1778, Mozart took up the violin sonata again; he would write another twenty in the ensuing decade. In these later sonatas, little by little, the violin gets a more interesting role.
The sonatas K. 301-306 contain some of the first examples of movements where the piano part would make little sense without the violin.
The last sonatas belong to the composer’s masterpieces, blending concerto-like piano virtuosity with fluent and idiomatic violin writing.