In the years leading up to Lutosławski's completion of this piece, the composer was a minor officer in the Polish Army when Poland was invaded in the events prior to World War II, by the Soviets from the East and the Nazis from every other direction.

After escaping from his initial capture, he fled on foot more than four hundred kilometers towards his home in Warsaw, which rendered him without an official identity until the end of the war.

After some time performing in small cafés to make his living,[1] as Germans had banned public concerts,[2] he and fellow pianist Andrzej Panufnik formed a piano duo, performing in a few popular nightclubs, where Lutosławski arranged more than two hundred pieces for two pianos.

Out of the two hundred arrangements Lutosławski wrote during the years prior to that event, the Variations was the only surviving composition, all the rest of them presumably ending up destroyed.

The premiere took place in Miami on November 18, 1979, with the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Brian Priestman and Blumental herself at the piano.

[1] At the end of the piece, Lutosławski diverts from Paganini's coda and adds a new variation presenting the main theme again in augmented form to serve as recapitulation.

It is 9 minutes long and scored for piano solo and an orchestra made up of two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets in B-flat, two bassoons (second doubling contrabassoon), four horns in F, three trumpets in C, three trombones, a tuba, timpani, a percussion section made up of a xylophone, a glockenspiel, a marimba, bells, and a vibraphone without motor, a harp, and a standard string section.