Acclaimed for his Naxos recordings of music by Chopin, Liszt, Dohnányi and Rachmaninov, Eldar Nebolsin here fulfills a heartfelt ambition to record important piano works by another great Romantic composer, Franz Schubert, for the label. The passion and pathos of the two sonatas, with their song-like melodies and adventurous harmonies, set the scene for one of Schubert’s most powerful solo piano pieces, the Wanderer Fantasy, a work so technically demanding that Schubert himself is reported to have exclaimed ‘the devil may play it!’. Based on his popular song Der Wanderer, the Fantasy is virtually a four-movement sonata in its own right and a path-breaking masterpiece of the piano literature.