that time.

Thank God I was able to do so, and I wish him well-being in the future;
in me he will always nd a loving brother and a loyal friend, I do not care about
the rest.3

On 28 August/9 September Rubinstein sent Senff his newly composed Fan-

tasy in E minor, Op. 77, with the remark I am satised with this work, and I
hope it will not shame either of us. Shortly afterward Rubinstein set out for
Leipzig, and from there he wrote to Rodenberg that he had received the revised
text of Der Thurm zu Babel and was delighted with it.4 His enthusiasm for the
Song of Songs, however, had not diminished and he conded to Rodenberg: I
am attached to it more than ever. Ahead of him, however, was a grueling con-
cert tour that would last ve years and take him all over Europe and to America,
with only brief visits to Russia. A notable feature of Rubinsteins concerts of
this period is that, if until then he had performed mostly his own compositions,
his program now began increasingly to include the works of other composers.
His travels began in Leipzig, where he appeared at a Gewandhaus concert on
17 October 1867. Two days later he boarded a train for Dresden, where he played
his Piano Concerto No.4 (conducted by Julius Rietz) and works by Beethoven
(Sonata No. 32), Schumann (Kreisleriana), Chopin, and Mendelssohn. Almost
immediately he had to return to Leipzig for a second concert on 21 October in
which he performed his own Piano Quartet in C major, Op. 66, with Ferdinand
David as the principal violinist, one of his preludes and fugues from the Op. 53
set, a barcarolle and a study, and other solo piano works that he had previously
performed at the Dresden concert. Then it was back to Dresden on 22 October
for another concert that same evening. He had just enough time to pen a few
lines to Kaleriya Khristoforovna, conding to her that he felt a certain dread:
Such things should be undertaken when one is between twenty and thirty
years old, and not, like me, nearly forty. Shall I reap my reward in the nancial
sense? Heaven only knows! I had to do it, and now I am only waiting to see what
comes of it.5
Thoughts about the Conservatory still dogged him, and he had asked some
acquaintances in Vienna to arrange for him to receive the program of the RMS
concerts as this interests me incredibly.6 He foresaw the many problems facing
those who continued to teach at the Conservatory: I can vividly imagine what
relations between people must be likethey must be rather jolly, he remarked
ironically to his mother.7 His sister, Soya, had suggested sending an open letter
to the St. Petersburg newspapers, but Rubinstein rejected the idea: I think it is
better to ignore all this, because if I write I shall quarrel with the whole of so-
ciety for good. What frightens me most is the thought that you cannot restrict
yourself to one letter, and you cannot keep things within limits, since it will
entail objections which you must follow up with other objections, etc., ad in-
nitem; I cannot get embroiled in this.8 On 31 October Rubinstein returned
to Vienna for a second concert, where he played his Piano Quartet in C major
with Hellmesberger and other Viennese musicians. More concerts followed on
3 and 7 November 1867 at which Hellmesberger joined him in a performance

124 Anton Rubinstein