Schubert/Liszt: Wanderer Fantasy / Tchaikovsky: Concert Fantasy – Lukas Geniusas

Pianist Lukas Geniušas pays tribute to the fantasy, a form synonymous with freedom, dear to the Romantics.

Schubert sets the figure of the wanderer to music in his Lied Der Wanderer, which, a few years later, would give rise to a large-scale instrumental work: the Fantasy in C major, D. 760 (1822), later known as the “Wanderer” Fantasy. Its four-part structure could be that of a four-movement sonata cycle, but these sections follow one another without interruption in a continuous process, like an uninterrupted journey. Fascinated by this work, Liszt wrote his transcription for piano and orchestra in 1851, two years before his famous Sonata in B minor, which is also monothematic and unfolds as a single, vast movement.

More in line with the classicists, Tchaikovsky cultivates virtuosity and instrumental brilliance in his Concert Fantasy of 1884. With the Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen, conducted by Modestas Pitrėnas, Geniušas offers a rare (if not unprecedented) pairing of these two fantasies, separated by just over six decades.