Choral Prelude:

One of the most amazing of child prodigy pianists, Mozart naturally wrote for his first instrument with special affection, and he has left a great volume of music for pianoforte alone and along with other instruments. It includes, very naturally, a good deal of his early work and in the pianoforte Sonatas there are little failings which he afterwards outgrew. His good humour, to be sure, his whole-hearted youthful zest in life, as well as the earnestness of youth, can all be traced in them, but they are not expressed with the clearness or fullness that we can hear in later and bigger works. In listening to them it should be borne in mind that keyboard music had scarcely passed the transition stage from the old instruments of the clavichord group, to the modern pianoforte; even the pianoforte of Mozart's day had a somewhat slender, delicate tone as compared with the modem concert grand. None the less, his pianoforte music lends itself well to performance on a present-day instrument, with all the fullness and resonance which that has at command.
This Sonata in C was one of the first three of Mozart's to be published; it was composed in 1779, when lie was twenty-three. It is in three movements, a sprightly Allegro, a gracious Andante cantabile, and a merry Allegretto.