Completed in October 1809 and dedicated to his cellist friend Franz Brunsvik, the fantasy is often dismissed as “pure improvisation, written down”. His student Carl Czerny described it as “in a mixed form, one idea following another as in a potpourri”. However, at least one musicologist has suggested that it reflects Beethoven’s great admiration for Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (son of J.S. Bach), and whose piano method was studied by the young Beethoven in Bonn.