Schumann wrote it in September and October 1842, during a year in which he concentrated on chamber music, and dedicated it to his wife Clara. At a private performance that December, Clara was ill and Mendelssohn sight-read the piano part; afterwards Schumann revised the work on his advice, including the scherzo’s second trio. Clara played the first public performance at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in January 1843.
Schumann’s choice of piano with string quartet shaped the piano quintets that Brahms, Dvořák and others wrote later. The second movement is a dark march in C minor with contrasting episodes, the scherzo is made almost wholly of scales running up and down, and the finale ends by combining its own theme with the main theme of the first movement.