The concerto was a natural culmination of the opposition of solo and tutti textures that characterized much eighteenth-century music. Using it as a vehicle for virtuoso display, performers not only extended instrumental techniques but also made increasing demands on instrument-makers for better, more responsive instruments. Composers in turn exploited that potential in what proved to be a progressive cyclical relationship. The performer-composer connection was especially crucial. A composer's notated text was rarely all-embracing as regards performance practice, not least because much eighteenth-century music was disseminated in sketched rather than fully realized formats, and performers were often required to be spontaneous in their interpretations across a wide range of performance practices.

Although much can be learnt about such practices from instrumental and theoretical treatises, iconography, historical archives, letters, critiques and even anecdotal evidence, idiomatic performance is difficult to achieve across the diversity of both styles and the particular circumstances surrounding concerto composition and performance. C. P. E. Bach's concertos H471–6, for example, were written for amateurs and differ from his other concertos in that they ‘are more adapted to the nature of the harpsichord, are easier both in the solo part and the accompaniment, are adequately ornamented in the slow movements and are provided with written-out cadenzas’. Some concertos were written for private performance, notably Wagenseil's for the Imperial family in Vienna, while others were premièred in public concerts, notably in series such as the Concert Spirituel in Paris.