Allegretto in C minor D915 (1827)

Unlike most Schubert piano pieces of such modest proportions and such intimate expression, the Allegretto in C minor was not destined for a collection of such pieces, like the Moments musicaux or the Impromptus. It was written for a friend, Ferdinand Walcher, an official in the War Ministry in Vienna who was about to be posted to Venice. Headed “Zur Erinnerung”    (For Remembrance), it is a tender farewell vacillating characteristically between C minor and C major in the outer sections and diverging briefly and scarcely less poignantly into A flat major in the middle.