In 1846, pianist and composer Franz Liszt, already a world celebrity at that point, started his last grand European tour in the southeast of the continent. He held recitals in many cities, among them Vienna, Sibiu, Bucharest, Iasi, Cernauti, Istanbul, and finally Odessa, wrapping up his tour in Czarist Russia. In December 1846, he landed in Bucharest, the capital of Wallachia, where he was hosted by the grand boyar Mihai Ghica. In January 1847 he held a recital in the palace of Prince Gheorghe Bibescu. In Bucharest, the cosmopolitan musician found a special kind of society, hospitable and curious, which was still navigating the dividing line between the Orient that had been the basis of local culture, and the West, whose ways the local elites were starting to adopt. The elites, meaning the old nobility and the nascent bourgeoisie, had started to modernize, and their children were already Western educated, and were starting to be seen as individuals, not simply miniature inheritors of t