Franz Schubert saw only three of his many chamber compositions put to print during his lifetime; two, the String Quartet in A minor, D. 804, and the Piano Trio in E flat, D. 929, have since attained an honored status among nineteenth century repertory warhorses. The other, the Rondo for violin and piano, D. 895, has not; it remains largely unknown even to violinists, and yet is at least the musical equal of the Fantasy in C major for violin and piano that violinists hold so dear. Schubert wrote the B minor rondo during autumn of 1826 with the hope, eventually fulfilled, that it be performed by its dedicatee, the Bohemian violinist Josef Slawjk. When published the following year as Opus 70 it was given the title "Rondo brillant" by the publisher.

The rondo is really an Introduction and Rondo: the Andante that prefaces the Allegro of the rondo proper is no mean musical appendage but in fact the source for several of the ideas that emerge in the rondo. Indeed, the very opening gesture of the Allegro—a play on the pitches B and C sharp that will return time and again in the piece—is intimately dependent on the notes of a tense violin/piano-right-hand imitation that bring the Andante to an unresolved close.

The stiff regality of the Andante's opening bars calls Handel to mind; soon a dolce melody is washed by gently flowing arpeggios in the piano right-hand, and dispelled only by the dramatic reappearance of the opening music—at first recast in B major but soon dissolved into the mysteriously hued seventh chord that leads straight into the Allegro.

The rondo itself is in five parts (ABACA), with a barn-burning coda based on the B music. Both the B and C episodes are of far greater length and of broader tonal aspirations than the refrain theme; the B music takes off on a military march rhythm introduced at the very end of the fiery A section, while the C music positively overflows with good-natured G major dotted rhythms.

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