This beautiful slow movement is once again in sonata form. The word "cantabile" in the title means "singing" - and that is exactly the character of this movement. Its beautiful lyricism is almost like an opera solo in nature. As a general rule, always take in and focus on the melody when listening to this movement, or any other movement labelled "cantabile".

This is not to say that the harmony should be ignored. In fact, the harmony here matches and perfectly complements the simple yet rich characteristic of the melody. Mozart uses the cello at several places in this movement to link together many parts of the violin's solos. A back-and-forth duet between the violin and cello is also used as transition material to move from the tonic to the dominant, but herein lies Mozart's genius: he also uses this same back-and-forth theme as the retransition material, moving from dominant back to tonic. (If you aren't familiar with some of these terms, you can get a quick crash-course on harmony in Lesson 6 of our Music Theory section.)

The recapitulation goes over the established material, but this time embellishes it through decorative notes and rhythms. We are treated again to the beautiful melodies and ringing harmonies. Finally, the music makes its way towards the end, as its momentum slowly winds down into the final note.

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