This is a very appealing symphony for string orchestra. Even though it is not one of his strongest works, it shows that music history did Leopold Mozart a disservice when it began to ignore his compositions in favor of his important role as teacher and mentor of his genius son, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791).

When the great Wunderkind was born, Leopold (1719 - 1787) was already well established as an important composer in Salzburg. Together with Michael Haydn (another fine composer whose reputation was eclipsed by a genius relative—in his case Franz Josef Haydn), Leopold dominated musical life under the reign of successive Cardinals holding the temporal and episcopal position of Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg's unusual government. Leopold was the author of over 70 symphonies, though several of these are lost and almost none survive in the original manuscript (making accurate dating of them difficult). He also wrote an important and very scholarly treatise on violin playing that is an important source of information as to the style of string playing and interpretation of music of his era.

Despite what would appear to be a low number in Eisen's list of Leopold Mozart's music, Symphony A 1 probably appeared late in Leopold's composing career, when he was devoting most of his efforts to the training and promotion of his two talented children. (Eisen's catalog designates the works by a letter representing the key and a more or less arbitrary number without chronological significance.)

The use of the homogenous sounds of a string orchestra throughout enables Leopold to assert his skill in counterpoint in the first of the symphony's three movements, Presto. As the tempo marking indicates, this movement is fast, indeed, with a nice alternation of contrapuntal and homophonic passages. It is built around the newly developed sonata-allegro principle of a pair of contrasting themes.

The slow movement, Andante, is in A minor. It is more or less in the form of a two-section aria, with a flowing melody.

The finale is a minuet in A major, with a central trio section in the minor. It is stately and affecting, rather slow, and an unusually unassertive way to close a symphony.

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