The Piano Sonata No. 18 in G major, D. 894 (Op. 78) by Franz Schubert is a sonata for solo piano, completed in October 1826. The work is sometimes called the "Fantaisie", a title which the publisher Tobias Haslinger gave to the first movement of the work, and not Schubert himself.[1] It was the last of Schubert's sonatas published during his lifetime, and was later described by Schumann as the "most perfect in form and conception" of any of Schubert's sonatas.[2]
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The work is in four movements:
A typical performance runs approximately 35 minutes.
The English pianist and Schubert specialist Imogen Cooper has described the G major sonata as "one of the rare completely serene sonatas that he wrote," adding, "Of course, as ever with him, there are contrasting passages which become stormy and a little bit dark, but the overall mood is one of peace and luminosity, in a way that the G Major string quartet, written a few months before, was most definitely not." She noted further that "the last movement has tremendous wit in it — and one or two moments of great poignancy, as if a cloud suddenly covered the sun, and then the sun comes out again."[3]
Nicholas Marston has briefly discussed the character and features of the sonata's first movement in preparation for the movement's recapitulation.[4] Peter Pesic commented on Donald Francis Tovey's observation that Schubert used a "circle of sixths" series of key signatures in the fourth movement of this sonata, in the sequence G → E♭ → B = C♭ → G = A.[5]