D’ALBERT, EUGEN. (1864-1932). Scottish-German pianist and composer. AMusQS. (“Eugen d’Albert”). 2/3p. 8vo. Portofino, March 9, 1909. A two-measure quotation from his most popular opera, Tiefland (“Lowlands”) neatly written in violet-colored ink.

The son of an English mother and a French-Italian composer of salon music, d’Albert studied with his father in Glasgow before traveling to London at age 12 where his teachers included Arthur Sullivan. He earned praise concertizing in London, arranged Sullivan’s The Martyr of Antioch and wrote the overture for Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1881 opera Patience. That same year, Hans Richter invited d’Albert to perform one of his compositions in Vienna, and where he remained to study with Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms while quickly becoming enamored of German culture. Hailed by Liszt as a second Tausig (considered Liszt’s brightest pupil), d’Albert became the youngest pianist to perform with the Vienna Philharmonic and won recognition for his interpretations of Bach and Beethoven whose critical editions he edited. He served as Kapellmeister to the Court of Weimar and, in 1907, became director of Berlin’s Hochschule für Musik. A prolific composer of operas, chamber works and lieder, d’Albert’s most successful opera, Tiefland, premiered in 1903. Our quotation was written out while d’Albert vacationed in Italy’s fashionable Riviera city of Portofino, just four months after Tiefland’s New York Metropolitan Opera premiere.

Folded into thirds with scattered creasing and wear and in very good condition. The blank integral leaf has been pasted onto a larger, black sheet, on the verso of which is a pasted quotation signed by the American vaudeville actor Nat C. Goodwin (1857-1919), “In the good old days When I was twenty one.”