This is the slow middle movement of Schubert’s Divertissement sur des motifs originaux français D823. The work is seldom played in its complete form, but the Andantino varié in B minor, has achieved the status of a self-contained item—understandably so, since it is one of the most perfect and beautiful of all Schubert’s duets. The inspiration behind it is likely to have been Mozart’s piano duet Variations in G major K501, which have a similar chamber-music intimacy, and in which—as in Schubert’s piece—the theme returns in all its original simplicity to round the music off.

The Variations in A flat major, D813, were composed in Zseliz in the summer of 1824, around the same time as the most ambitious of all Schubert’s piano duets, the Grand Duo D812. Reporting from Zseliz to his artist friend Moritz von Schwind, Schubert told him that the new variations had been greeted with particular applause there. ‘But as I don’t quite trust the Hungarians’ taste’, Schubert added, ‘I shall leave it to you and the Viennese to decide about them.’

There are eight variations on the theme.