anti-Semitic grounds but were persuaded to acquiesce because of Nikolays

high-society connections.65 After his marriage Nikolay gave music lessons for
about a year and a half, and eventually, at the beginning of February 1857, secured himself a permanent position at the Nikolayevsky Institute for Orphans
in Moscow. Antons reaction to the sudden news of Nikolays imminent marriage highlights a degree of ambiguity on his part. Outwardly he shows complete brotherly concern and expresses his indignation that both Villoing and
Yakov Veynberg should have approved the match. He protests to his mother: If
I knew that my words would have any signicance for him, I would write and
try to dissuade him while there is still time.66 At the same time the old feeling
of rivalry, which is never apparent in his relations with his elder brother, Yakov,
bubbled to the surface. His own attempts at social climbing through a liaison
with Anne de Friedebourg had failed miserably, and he may have felt some envy
at the possibility that Nikolay was marrying into such an inuential family:
Please write to me which Khrushchova Nikolay is marrying . . . Is it the family
of the knight marshal of the Grand Duchess Yekaterina? he asked his mother.
Most important, at a time when Anton was himself contemplating a return to
Russia, he was anxious to know whether Nikolay intends establishing himself
in Moscow or St. Petersburg and does he have any expectations of a post, and
what sort of post he could lay claim to.67
Meanwhile, Anton remained in Biebrich until the beginning of October, still
wondering whether to go back to Russia. There were compelling reasons for him
to stay, for, as he informed Kaleriya Khristoforovna: I am getting closer and
closer to my aimto make my name as a composer. Already artists are playing my compositions in their concerts . . . in short, everything is going well.68
Some of his compositions were already being published, including certain songs
and the cycle Kamenny Ostrov, which Schott brought out toward the end of
1855. Liszt continued to send him words of warm encouragement from Weimar,
where Berhard Cossmann and Edmund Singer had taken part in a performance
of the Piano Trio in G minor and where the Duchess Sophie had been delighted
with the Persian Songs dedicated to her. There were cautionary words, too, for
a recently completed fugue (possibly one from Rubinsteins Op. 53 set) had
not pleased Liszt. He likened it to the turgid counterpoint in an oratorio by
Friedrich Karl Khmstedt who had conducted his work in Weimar at the beginning of April, and which Liszt characterized as being like an unsalted and
unpeppered sausage. None of this discouraged Rubinstein from intensive composition. The few months spent in Biebrich had enabled him to complete his
work on the ten-movement suite of old dances, but, despite previous assurances
to the contrary, he complained: that monster Haslinger does not want to take
it.69 He had also written some shorter salon pieces that he had promised to
Gustav Lewy in Vienna, as well as his Third Piano Sonata dedicated to the
Countess Kalergis, the Viola Sonata in F minor, and he had also made a start on
his String Quintet in F. The most important work that absorbed him, however,
was the setting of Das Verlorene Paradies, which, as he told Liszt: I have begun,
but very much fear has proved lost to me in view of the difculty of the task . . .
Foreign Tour 63