With his Fantasy, Scriabin reached the culmination of his first period of pure Romanticism in the tradition of piano writing. The piece is composed in a single movement following a sonata form.

Featuring the thickest textures of his entire first period, the work remains faithful to his predecessors: the harmonically ambiguous introduction, constantly avoiding a full tonic triad, is reminiscent of Liszt and Wagner’s tonal ambiguity. The treatment of the gentle cantabile second theme, which later erupts into a grand climax, closely resembles Chopin’s Ballades.

A well-known anecdote surrounds this piece: near the end of his life, Scriabin heard his former conservatory colleague Sabaneïv play the work and asked, “Who composed that?”—as it sounded strangely familiar to him.