Nothing is known of the circumstances of composition of one of the most important of Mozart's earlier piano sonatas, the >Sonata in A minor, K. 310. It bears the date 1778 and was written in Paris, and therefore was composed at a time when Mozart had come to understand the futility of wasting more time in France, where he felt himself undervalued. During the course of the summer his mother died, a misfortune with which he was able to bear with a greater degree of maturity than might have been expected, breaking the news gently enough to his father, at home in Salzburg. The A minor Sonata opens with a principal theme of some poignancy, the mood lightened by the C major second subject. The elaborate figuration of the F major slow movement leads to an A minor final Presto that finds room for a brief episode in the tonic major key. The Sonata in C major, K. 330, was probably written in 1783, either in Vienna, or during the course of Mozart's first visit home to Salzburg, bringing with him a wife of whom his father strongly disapproved. It is clearly one of the sonatas mentioned by the composer in a letter to his father written in June 1784, identified with K. 330, K. 331 and K. 332, and now sent for publication to Artaria, but already known to his sister. The sonata opens with an operatic principal theme, while its F major slow movement has at its heart a darker-hued F minor section, leading to a final Allegretto. By 1788, the date of the first two movements of the Sonata in F major, K. 533, Mozart's financial difficulties had assumed some importance for him. His father had died in 1787, the year of the opera Don Giovanni, while in 1786, the year of composition of the last movement of the K. 533 Sonata, Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) had proved a success. A fourth child had been born at the end of December and was to die six months later. The first two movements of the F major sonata bear the date 3rd January 1788, and the final rondo the date 10th June 1786, catalogued by Köchel separately as K. 494. The whole sonata was published in Vienna in early 1788. The first movement starts with a single-line melody, echoed at the octave, followed by a second subject that includes an important triplet figure. There is a B flat major slow movement and the final rondo, expanded for the 1788 publication, now includes a cadenza with an element of counterpoint.

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