Exploring a Menuetto of Schubert

Never intended. But I got a good surprise one week ago, when listening to Cuarteto Casals playing the G minor string quartet of Schubert D. 173 - It was the first time I got to know the work; Here, the third movement, Menuetto:

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Immediately it remembered me of a quite similar one in a piano sonata:

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The 3rd movement of D. 279 - Once a friend of mine said it illustrates stubborn ducks dancing (LOL), though Kempff's interpretation above was too elegant to give you any chance of that imagination ;-)

(First bars of each piece)

In the darkness I could only get from the program note that the string quartet was written in 1815. So the first thing I did, once at home, was to search for Henle's and Wiener Urtext editiors' comments of the sonata D. 279. Yes, also composed in the year 1815! But nothing more. No mention of the G minor quartet at all. However, both texts give an earlier version of this movement, as a single piece for piano - Menuetto in A minor D. 277a:

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The Menuetto part was identical to that of D. 279 (except some slight differences in the 2nd section), and the main difference of the two versions is the Trio part. Now as I already knew the Trio of D. 279, I found that of D. 277a is much more unexpected. Schubertian harmony full of imagination! And if we take a look at the Trio of the string quartet D. 173, actually we have three similar Menuettos with completely different Trios...

I would call it "The 1815 Triangle" of Schubert (aged 18). But a few days later, I encountered what was behind, where the genius borrowed materials: 

Click to listen 

So, for another time I have arrived late:

If this is the definitive one, then the chronology should be:

July 1788 —— Mozart Symphony in G minor K. 550 - Third movement

      ↓

March 1815 —— Schubert String Quartet in G minor D. 173 - Third movement

      ↓

September 1815 —— Schubert Minuetto in A minor for Piano D. 277a

September 1815 —— Schubert Piano Sonata in C major D. 279 - Third movement

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PS. (11/11/2013)

Wandering in the cold and rainy San Sebastian, way back to my hostel, suddenly I remembered of "Alla tedesca" - the easy sonata of Beethoven in G major (Op. 79). The style (or spirit) might be somehow related...

John O'Conor once described how Kempff showed the German peasant dance to inspire the young colleagues in his Beethoven course:

Click to see

This sonata was written in 1809, though I am not sure when it got published or if the young Schubert had listened to it already. But evidently they shared the same atmosphere, in Vienna. Now I think my exploration could come to the end, provisionally V_V