In Liszt reception, the role of Schubert's piano writing as a model of pianistic virtuosity is little discussed, certainly not in comparison with discussion of the influential virtuosity of Carl Czerny and, above all, the violin virtuoso Niccolo Paganini. There is no intention here to try to refocus the rather dubious received view of this aspect of Schubert's own creativity, with its tendency to regard his solo piano writing as somehow only tangentially, almost accidentally virtuosic. Yet as Liszt was well aware, some Schubert requires from the virtuoso pianist as high a degree of technical accomplishment as almost any contemporaneous repertoire. While Liszt would not find in Schubert such a tour de force as, say, the finale of Beethoven's Piano Sonata, op. 106 (“Hammerklavier”)—and, after all, probably no music from the second and third decades of the nineteenth century can be compared with that monumental call on dexterity and endurance—nevertheless there are far from isolated examples in Schubert of virtuosity required at a level of which Liszt had sought, in his developing early years, to make himself uniquely capable, to make himself—as everyone knows he intended—the “Paganini of the piano.” Examples of Schubert's virtuosic extremes known to Liszt could include the finales of the Piano Sonata in C Minor (D. 958) and the compositionally earlier Piano Sonata in A Minor (D. 748), both published just over a decade after Schubert's untimely death in 1828; and they would certainly include the Fantasie in C Major, op. 15 (D. 760), the most technically demanding of Schubert's works, of which the composer reportedly exclaimed “the devil may play it!” after getting stuck in the last movement during a private performance.

The work came to be known as the Wanderer Fantasy, very possibly a title that Liszt himself put into circulation. Liszt's involvement with the Wanderer included making an edition of the solo version in later life, when he was commissioned by the Stuttgart publishing firm of Cotta in 1868 to provide items by Weber and Schubert, including the Wanderer, for a series of “Instructive Editions.” It was “through Liszt's performances of Schubert's great Fantasie … that the work was first brought to public attention… . During his halcyon years as a touring virtuoso, in the 1830s and 1840s, the work turns up frequently in his recital programs.”