In letters to Heinrich Albert Probst on May 10 and August 1, 1828, Schubert gave instructions regarding the trio that included his expectations for its Leipzig premiere—that it be “performed for the first time by capable people”—and his desire that the published score “be dedicated to nobody, save those who find pleasure in it.” Such directives intimate that, after hearing the work in Vienna (which had included the music of the subsequent cuts to the final movement that Schubert charged “are to be most scrupulously observed”) and buoyed by its reception, the composer hoped that the response to its first performance outside Austria, by those so privileged to enjoy it, would replicate the one in his native city. Probst came through save for the score's dedication (unless he took the instructions to mean that nothing in this regard should appear on the cover), its publication beset by delays that frustrated Schubert. Performances on November 30 and December 4 took place at the home of Friedrich Wieck, played by Johann Andreas Grabau and Christian Gottlieb Muller, members of the Gewandhaus orchestra, and the pianist Adolph Emil Wendler, a law student passionately devoted to music. In attendance were Probst, Gottfried Wilhelm Fink, and the teenaged Schumann, whose diary entries on those dates concluded with “delight in the trio” and “exalted night and the immortal Schubert trio still in the ears.”

Here was just the kind of small circle of enthusiasts (Schumann termed it Kränzchen) akin to the Viennese equivalents that had nurtured Schubert save perhaps for the more reliable musical aptitude of the Leipzigers. Indeed, Probst must have passed on the composer's second letter to Fink because the latter printed it in his exultant review of December 10, complete with his confirmation of Schubert's vision that those who prized the music would serve as its implicit dedicatees: