Lebensstürme in A minor D.947

Schubert wrote two of his piano duets in quick
succession: the F minor Fantasie D.940  in April 1828 and this splendid composition
that May. It has proved a popular work and his publisher Diabelli later added
the title Lebensstürme
or Life’s
Storms.There has been speculation
that it may have been meant as the first movement of a full sonata for
which  the A major Rondo D.951 might also
be a part,  but nothing so far has been
found to prove this. It certainly is in an adventurous version of sonata-form –
instead of the usual linked themes a fifth apart, he introduces widely separated
harmonic structures: the first pair of themes in A minor and the second in
A-flat major.