yet resolved; the others do not count, as they only want to take little pieces and

I am tired of turning them out.62 His Persian Songs, on the other hand, were
soon to be published by Kistner in Leipzig, and he had given instructions to
Gurkhaus to send a copy to Liszt as soon as they were ready.
A few weeks later Rubinstein wrote to Carl Schuberth about his enthusiastic
reception in the Austrian capital, which had been marred only by the hostility
of the critics who had abused him more than the cholera epidemic. Gustav
Lewy (the owner of the music shop in Vienna) had produced a lithograph portrait of him and he asked Schuberth to recommend it to Bernhard, along with
a subscription to Zellners journal Bltter fr Musik, Theater und Kunst. Although he had nished his A major Symphony two months earlier, Rubinstein
had decided against sending it to Schuberth, as he had assumed that there would
be no concerts of the Philharmonic Society because of the death of Nicholas I
(on 18 February/2 March 1855). For similar reasons he had also withheld his
recently composed Ouverture Triomphale in C for the accession of the new emperor. With the Crimean War still dominating European politics, Rubinsteins
plans for the coming months were uncertain. Until the war was over, it would
be unseemly for him, a Russian patriot, to travel to Paris or London. His other
options were to return to Russia in November or remain in Germany for another
year. Some time in late April or May he returned to Biebrich, where he received
a letter from his mother that quite dumbfounded him.

Marriage of Nikolay Rubinstein

In his reply on 10/22 May 1855 he wrote to Kaleriya Khristoforovna:
Your letter received today astounded me extraordinarily. So Nikolay is getting
married! I did not take him to be such an idiot: to get married at twenty is unheard of. Apply all your efforts to ensure that he completes his university studies
at least and does not become unhappy for the rest of his life for the sake of this
marriage. Perhaps he thinks that he will nd a good position because of this;
but could he not have just restricted himself to courting the girl? I hope that
nothing more will result from this because that would be extremely sad.63 The
woman whom Nikolay was to marry was Yelizaveta Dmitriyevna Khrushchova,
his senior by around ten years, and the daughter of a prominent Moscow ofcial.
The marriage was not only impulsive but also unequal, and it was to last little
more than three years. Nikolays later recollections of the event were apparently
vague, and he attributed his actions to the stubbornness of youth.64 From the
start the marriage was opposed by Kaleriya Khristoforovna and her daughters.
They were particularly outraged by one of the principal conditions laid down
by the Khrushchovs: Nikolay had to abandon his career entirely as a public performer, as it was thought unseemly for their daughter to be associated with
someone who entertained people for money. Yelizavetas father, Dmitry Mikhaylovich Khrushchov, had served in the Preobrazhensky Regiment life-guards
and was later made a chamberlain and an actual state councillor. Catherine
Drinker Bowen also intimates that the Khrushchovs opposed the marriage on
62 Anton Rubinstein