Mozart may well have written himself out as regards the piano trio format before beginning on this piece and it seems a piano sonata was both the pattern and skeleton for it. In October of 1788, the great creative blaze which had produced his three great, final symphonies seems to have passed and the great genius was artistically becalmed and personally and financially embarrassed. His activities in this period seem to consist of giving lessons, which he despised, and attempting to impregnate his wife, which apparently he did not. He was also constantly begging his friends for money and thus it seems his self esteem had deserted him as well. The G major trio is the shortest of the piano trios and while not cursed with the tutorial simplicity of its predecessor, it contains less of his effortless brilliance and more of his sweat. This said, the work is nonetheless flawlessly crafted and thoroughly Mozart throughout. In the first movement, the interplay between piano and strings is successful even if, as suspected, the string parts were later added to what was originally a piano sonata. The second movement, a seven-minute andante, resorts to that deadliest of devices, the theme and variations. In Mozart's hands, however, even this shabby ruse succeeds, at least to the extent that the variations are skillful and creative. The finale is a brief allegretto which passes as a waltz and the ending is imaginative. As the last completed of his piano trios, the work slips below the quality of the K.502 and the K.542 and following as it did the three great, last of his symphonies, it seems to have been a work of economic necessity rather than a labor of love.

© All Music Guide