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Mozart's fascination with the piano concerto parallels Europe's interest in the piano itself. In the composer's early years, pianos were still regarded as new inventions. Harpsichords, which had been the stars of the Baroque era, were as yet highly regarded. Gradually, though, the greater power and versatility of the piano gave it precedence over its predecessor. A growing demand arose for compositions suited to this new keyboard instrument, and a fine pianist (Mozart was acclaimed as one of the best) could earn a good living playing concerti for appreciative audiences, especially if one could do so in Vienna, where appetites for new piano concerti seemed insatiable. For this reason, Mozart abandoned his native Salzburg. He settled in the imperial capital in the summer of 1781. In the decade that remained of his life, he would produce seventeen piano concerti, many of which now number among the masterpieces of the repertoire.
It was late in 1786 that Mozart composed his Concerto no. 25, the third such work he had written in that year alone, and the sixth within two years. The piece was completed on December 4th, two days before the completion of the Prague Symphony, which should serve to prove that Mozart worked on more than one composition at a time. Even he, as quick a composer as any master, could not have written that entire symphony in two days. These were amongst Mozart's most prosperous months, when his music was in great demand and his Viennese popularity was at its peak. With such a full schedule, he rarely wrote a composition only for fun; generally speaking, his works of this period were produced with a specific purpose in mind. The apparent purpose of the Concerto no. 25 was a series of Advent subscription concerts, but these concerts never took place, and soon Mozart left Vienna for Prague, where he supervised a production of The Marriage of Figaro. Although the new concerto may have been performed during that Prague sojourn, the Viennese did not hear the piece for three more months, until, on March 7, 1787, when it was included on a Lenten concert program. On that occasion, the composer himself was the soloist.
When writing a concerto, most composers would begin with the solo part, then fill in the accompaniment, but Mozart was never a conformist. He could hear an entire composition in his imagination before physically writing a single note. Rather than constructing a composition on paper, as mere mortals must, Mozart assembled it in his mind where it remained intact until he found time to copy it out from memory. On reaching that point, he would set about producing a full orchestral score, frequently saving time by merely sketching the solo part. After all, if he himself was planning to be the soloist, as was frequently the case, it was a waste of time to write down the notes he already knew! Only when he prepared a piece for publication or for performance by another soloist did Mozart write down an entire solo part, including cadenzas, which he would have improvised anyway. Since Mozart intended to play the new concerto himself, since he never published it, and since it was not played by other pianists, it has no original Mozart cadenzas. Modern pianists must compose their own or use cadenzas created by others. For anyone to match this master's effortless style is always a challenge, but it is particularly so in this case, for the Concerto no. 25 is one of the grandest of all his compositions in the genre. During much of the nineteenth century, it was compared to Mozart's own Jupiter Symphony and to Beethoven's Eroica Symphony due to a perceived similarity of scope, and musicologist Stanley Sadie describes it as the "grandest and most ceremonial" of all Mozart's piano concerti. Certainly, it is the most ambitious piano concerto to have been produced by any composer up to that time.