The International Mozarteum Foundation has announced the rediscovery of two previously unknown Mozart piano compositions. Both pieces, the solo part of a complete concerto movement and a fragmentary prelude, have been in the possession of the Foundation since 1864, but only recently identified. They are thought to have been written around 1764, in a notebook used by Mozart's father, Leopold. They offer further insight into Mozart's childhood, and the extent of his compositional skills before the age of ten.

The notebook, which was intended to progress Mozart's sister Nannerl in her musical studies, contains eighteen pieces. Most of them had been attributed to Leopold or anonymous composers, but researchers grew suspicious about the musical structure of the pieces. They were far too extravagant for Mozart's father, yet written in his hand. Both contain technical errors which an experienced composer like Leopold would not have made, so it seems likely that he simply wrote down what his son had dreamed up.

The pieces were performed by the clavichordist Florian Birsak in August, on Mozart's own fortepiano. In January 2010 an orchestrated version of the concerto, prepared by the Mozart scholar Robert Levin, will be performed in Salzburg. These are not the only Mozart pieces to have resurfaced in recent years. In 2008 a library in Nantes unveiled a hitherto unknown score that had lain in its archive for over a century, and experts identified three scores found at Poland's historic Jasna Gora monastery as possible Mozart creations.