A typical performance duration of the concerto takes 16–18 minutes.
The manuscript, written in red, green, blue, and black ink, was formerly considered as a jocular attempt to rattle the intended performer, Mozart's friend
Joseph Leutgeb. However, recently it was suggested that the multicolored score may also be a kind of "color code".[2]
The last movement is a "quite obvious" example of the hunt topic, "in which the intervallic construction, featuring prominent
tonic and dominant triads in the main melody, was to some degree dictated by the capability of the horn, and so was more closely allied with the original 'pure' characteristics of the '
chasse' as an open-air hunting call."[3]
This concerto is one of Mozart's two horn concerti to have
ripieno horns (horns included in the orchestra besides the soloist), though, in contrast to K. 417, the solo horn in this one duplicates the first ripieno horn's part in the
tutti passages.[4]
Discography
Given its duration (no more than 20 minutes), it is quite common to find this Horn Concerto with Mozart's other three.
^Jean-Pierre Marty, The Tempo Indications of Mozart. New Haven & London: Yale University Press (1988): 43. "The very absence of sixteenths is also an incentive towards overly fast tempos, and this is why the finales of the Horn Concertos K.386b, 417 and 447 are almost always performed faster than 88/264. Yet, the finale of K.417 ends with a coda marked Più allegro, and the finale of the fourth horn concerto (K.495), though very similar in style to the other three, is marked Allegro vivace."
^Mozart, W. A. (2002). Hornkonzert Nr. 4 Es-dur KV 495. Klavierauszug. Wiese, Henrik (preface). München: G. Henle Verlag. pp. III. ISMN M-2018-0704-1
^John Irving, Mozart, the "Haydn" quartets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1998): 95, note 20. "Once defined, however, such 'chasse' characteristics could survive transplantation to other instruments and genres," such as the
String Quartet in B-flat, K. 458.
^Leavis R (1953). "Mozart's Last Horn Concerto". Music & Letters. 34 (4): 316.
doi:
10.1093/ml/xxxiv.4.315.