The Rondo in D was written as a replacement finale for Mozart's earliest original piano concerto, K. 175 in D, composed in Salzburg in 1773. After the composer settled in Vienna as a freelance musician in 1781, his first priority was to establish a reputation that would provide him with an income. He did so by means of teaching and as a concert pianist. With few piano concertos to his name at this point, Mozart looked to draw on earlier compositions of this type. An obvious candidate was the D Major Concerto, which, Mozart reported to his father Leopold, had been a great favorite when he had played it in Mannheim during his tour of 1777-78. Following revision of the wind parts (pairs of oboes and horns) for all three movements, he was obviously satisfied with the opening Allegro and the central Andante ma non poco, but decided to replace the original Allegro finale (in sonata form) with a completely new movement, the present Rondo. It was probably composed in Vienna during in the early part of 1782, a time Mozart would have planning for the important Lenten concert season. The first performance of the revised work was probably that given on March 3, 1782, the first Lent concert Mozart gave in Vienna, at which he also improvised a fantasia. Despite the opinion of some modern commentators that the gallant Rondo makes for a less satisfactory finale than the original, it became one of the composer's most popular concerto movements among his contemporaries. Mozart himself seems to have been delighted with it, referring to in a letter to Leopold as "a gem," and later also reporting that it had been encored.

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