229. Franz Schubert - Fantasy in C major, "Wanderer" (1822)

Recording

Title: Wanderer-Fantasie
Performer: Maurizio Pollini
Year: 1973
Length: 22 minutes

Review

Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy in four movements is a beautiful and innovative piece of music. The innovation comes in part from the idea of making the four movements practically seamless, not only that but also sharing much of the thematic content between them.

This simple idea gives the whole work a great amount of cohesion, making it sound like one long movement with big shifts more than four independent tracks. This gives the whole piece a sense of oneness which works great here.

The music is beautiful, from the cheery first movement to the delicate second and the playful third, back to another allegro at the end, all the music is pretty much unforgettable, and being based as it is in a song it has a kind of almost pop-sensibility to it, with a hook running through the whole piece.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The Wanderer Fantasy is considered Schubert's most technically demanding composition for the piano. Schubert himself said "the devil may play it", in reference to his own inability to do so properly.

Lang Lang plays first movement moving into second: