12 Konzert-Etüden : für Klavier zu 2 Händen, op. 2

Twelve concert studies by Adolf von Henselt, notorious for demanding hand extensions beyond what most pianists can manage, since Henselt had trained his own hands to stretch far past the usual limits. Each study carries a poetic epigraph, and the eleventh, headed with the words if I were a bird I would fly to you, became one of the most popular salon pieces of the century. Henselt spent most of his career in Russia and suffered from such severe stage fright that he almost entirely stopped performing in public.