Taking a leave from his employment at Salzburg, Leopold Mozart and his famous children spent several months in Vienna during 1768. It appears that young Wolfgang made a conscious effort to adapt his compositional style to the tastes of the Viennese public, evinced, for example, in the expansion of his symphonic forms to four movements. This trait is seen early on during the visit in the Symphony in D major (K. 45) that Mozart completed on January 16, just days after his arrival. Scholar Neal Zaslaw speculated that the symphony was first presented in a concert given that spring for a visiting Russian diplomat. That the piece was performed in a smaller court setting, but for a ceremonial occasion, is suggested by the scoring of the Sympony for strings, two oboes, two horns, two trumpets, and tympani (K. 45). The first movement of the symphony is marked by a series of melodies unfolding across varying sections of the orchestra. The energy suggested by the Allegro marking is enhanced by the shifting surface of the texture, which continually passes the principle themes from instrument to instrument. The slow second movement, in G, assumes a clear binary form and a subtle character deriving in part from the interplay of the rising eighth-note figure in the melody and the arpeggiated triplets in the accompaniment, as well as its scoring for strings alone. Likewise, the Minuet engages in subtle rhythmic play, the sturdy chordal quarter notes of the main motive spinning into triplets over the barline to the third beat of the subsequent bar; the Trio takes a more subdued approach, all steady quarter and half notes set in clear-cut phrases shaped by simple agogic and dynamic accents. The Finale is cast in a lively 2/4, its nimbly ascending dotted figures alternating with more fluid neighbor figurations in triplets. The movement of themes through the orchestra, especially the passing of the dotted figures to the lower strings, recalls similar moments in the first movement. In addition to the symphonic setting of this music, the young Mozart also adapted it for use as the overture to La finta simplice, an opera composed later that year but, due to personnel problems, not performed during the Vienna visit. The overture version, cataloged as K. 46a, omits the Minuet/Trio and slightly changes the orchestration of the work to fit the instrumentation of the opera orchestra.

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