Mozart’s earliest surviving piano sonatas were written at the end of 1774 and start of 1775, when the 19 year old’s time was split between Salzburg and Munich, where he was supervising the premiere of his opera La finta giardiniera, and in them we can perhaps hear shades both of Italian opera, and the influence of his teacher Johann Christian Bach. K. 281 sits an exquisitely expressive Andante amoroso between virtuosic outer movements. K. 282 is Mozart’s only instance of opening a sonata with a slow movement. Pleasures of K. 283 include its suavely pattering, syncopation-spiced opening Allegro. We then leap to 1784 for K. 457, one of only two minor-key piano sonatas Mozart wrote, whose emotional fire almost foreshadows Beethoven. By contrast, minor-keyed interludes punctuating sunny K. 330 (written the previous year) feel more like colour than cloud.