D'Albert offers two bars of a piano work in 9/8, which he marks Langsam and signs beneath with a friendly sentiment. The recipient was probably a member of the musical Ries family.

Scottish-born pianist Eugène d'Albert was one of Liszt's most distinguished pupils and spent much of his early career in Germany and Austria. In 1882, in fact, he became the then youngest person to ever solo with the Vienna Philharmonic. He quickly gained a reputation as one of the period's best Beethoven interpreters. D'Albert also counted composers Johannes Brahms, Richard Strauss, Hans Pfitzner, and Engelbert Humperdinck among his many friends, and eighteenth-century pianist-composer Domenico Alberti among his ancestors.