Early evidence of Schubert’s interest in music of the past can be found in his “Fantasy in C minor” of 1811 (D 2 E), with its echoes of Mozart’s fantasy in the same key. A recurring motivic snippet in the virtuosic “Graz Fantasy” in C major (D 605 A), probably composed between 1818 and 1821, already foreshadows the monumental “Wanderer Fantasy” of 1822 (op. 15 - D 760).

The most famous of the fantasies, the Wanderer Fantasy, now appears in a separate edition (BA 10870).

While Schubert was playing the Wanderer Fantasy for a circle of friends, he faltered and exclaimed impatiently: The Devil should play this stuff!”
Yet it wasn’t the Devil but Liszt – like Schumann a great admirer of the piece – who later arranged the Wanderer Fantasy for piano and orchestra and again for two pianos. It was also Liszt who gave the work the nickname it has retained to the present day.