Composed 1828; 18 minutes

Nine hundred and thirty-nine catalog numbers separate Schubert’s first surviving composition—a rather rambling piano duet Fantasia in G, written when he was 13—from today’s magnificent piano duet Fantasia in F minor. Schubert composed the Fantasie, D. 940 at the very peak of his creativity, in the last year of his life, and it contains some of the most heartfelt, technically demanding music he wrote. In between, he produced 20 piano duets, some substantial, others more convivial entertainment music for the front parlor (or Biedermeier salon of 19^th century Vienna). All of it, however, was published commercially, either in his lifetime or within a dozen years of his death. 

The Fantasia begins in a gentle, questioning way, like a conversation opening into a descriptive story about a journey that lies ahead. The somber, elegiac mood is broken by a more dramatic, disturbing theme. The juxtaposition of such themes is a hallmark of Schubert's mature writing, and it characterizes the entire first movement. The tonal ambiguity, with its frequent shifting from minor to major and back, adds to the feeling of sadness. In many ways, the Fantasia can be viewed as a sonata in four movements. But, like the earlier Wanderer Fantasy, Schubert here creates four interrelated movements played without break, building cumulatively in intensity, and presenting a surprise when the next one appears. The tonality shifts from an F minor opening movement to the F-sharp minor of an imposing Largo and sparkling Scherzo. Then, after a dramatic collision of tonalities, the return to F minor brings one of Schubert's most compact yet powerful finales. The reappearance of the elegiac opening theme is a moment of great poignancy, while contributing structurally to the overall coherence of Schubert’s architecture. The ensuing intense fugal writing and a consummate use of silence add to an overriding feeling of melancholy and inevitability.