Bilder Aus Osten. 6 Impromptus für das Pianoforte zu vier Händen. Op. 66. Complet.

Leipzig: Kistner. [1849]. First Edition. Folio. Title page lithographed, music engraved. [PN] 1665-1667. 31 pp. (double paginated as 1-17, 4-17). Beautiful decorative frame on title. With the preface of the composer on p. 3. Modern cloth-backed boards, outer leaves repaired. Hofmann p. 146-147. McCorkle p. 286. Scarce.

"In that he intended [Bilder Aus Osten] as a Christmas gift for Clara, and considering its scoring for the most convivial of keyboard media (piano four-hands), it can be said to have sprung no less directly out of family life than the Album für die Jugend. But given the technical challenges posed by several pieces in the set, the sociability it aimed to promose was clearly that between artists of the first rank. According to the composer's own prefatory note to the 1849 Kistner edition of the Bilder Aus Osten, the work was inspired by the Makamen des Hariri, Rückert's translation from the Arabic of a medieval epic dealing with the adventures of Abu Seid and his friend Harith. The cycle represents a further manifestation of the same enthusiasm for oriental topics that had kindled Schumann's interest in Moore's Peri some eight years earlier." (John Daverio, "Robert Schumann," p. 410) (9813)

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