Although it is undated, the Sonata in D major for four hands at one piano was composed at some time during the middle of 1772, the year in which Mozart later returned to Italy with his father Leopold to supervise the opening of his new opera Lucio Silla, K. 135. Like two other early four-hand sonatas, K. 19d, composed in London in 1765, and K. 358 in B flat, which dates from 1773 or 1774, it was written for Mozart and his sister Nannerl to play. In her youth, she was considered as accomplished a performer as her brother and there is a famous portrait that shows the two seated at the same piano. Brother and sister are recorded as having played the work at arch-episcopal court in Salzburg on September 3, 1780, an event that also included them playing either the Concerto in E flat for two pianos, K. 365, or the two-piano version of K. 242, originally designed as a concerto for three pianos. According to Mozart's biographer Alfred Einstein, the three-movement work is best described as a reduction of an Italian symphony where the distinctive writing for strings and winds and of solos and tuttis is clearly laid out.

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