The German composer-pianist offers the first ten bars of the second movement of his Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, boldly signing and dating below on an album leaf. Sauer penned this quotation very shortly after the concerto's premiere, which he gave at the piano with the Vienna Philharmonic on December 1, 1901. The work was dedicated to the memory of his former teacher, Nikolai Rubinstein.

Emil von Sauer was among the leading pianists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and counted both Nikolai Rubinstein and Franz Liszt as his teachers. Although he would maintain that Rubinstein exercised a greater influence on his musicality, his elegant and smooth playing style unmistakably evoked that of Liszt. Fellow Liszt pupil Martin Krause even went so far as to call von Sauer Liszt's "legitimate heir".