Fantaisie in B minor (Scriabin)

At any rate, as Sabaneev saw fit to fake Scriabin's death-date and otherwise make free with facts, his recountings of otherwise uncorroborated stories are best taken with a grain of salt.

The opening is clearly in B minor, but the tonic is consistently avoided: a technique used extensively in Chopin's ballades, in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, and by Scriabin himself in his third and fourth sonatas.

The opening is characterized by an inexorably descending bassline and a melody that alternately struggles upwards and plunges dramatically back down in jagged gestures.

The closing groups, also in D major, are grand and confident with rhythmic obsessiveness and directional gestures characteristic of Scriabin's heroic writing.

The "Fantasy" elements take over, however, at the end of the recapitulation: rather than settling comfortably into B major, the piece launches into a coda that is at turns free and improvisational, sequential (almost a second development), and recapitulatory.

At any rate, the texture at the close is very similar to that of Liszt's transcription of the Wagner; the key is the same; and in each case the major tonic is approached by the supertonic half diminished seventh chord.