Sophie Menter she became professor of piano at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory but left in 1886 to continue concertizing. Because of her popularity, Menter succeeded with music that no other pianist would touch. This included Liszt's First Piano Concerto, which she played in Vienna in 1869, 12 years after its disastrous premiere there. One of her recital specialties was a piece entitled "Rhapsodies". This was a composite of three of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies—Nos. 2, 6 and 12—along with fragments from several others. She also composed various pieces for piano, mainly in a brilliant style, yet referred to her own compositional talent as
Concerto for solo piano and considered the first example of a concerto fitted to solo keyboard. Schumann's Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor (1835), Op. 14, was labelled by Tobias Haslinger as a "Concerto without orchestra". The French composer Charles-Valentin Alkan wrote in 1857 his set of Op. 39 études, of which nos. 8–10 were labelled as a concerto for solo piano. It includes markings such as "Tutti", "Solo" and "Piano", as well as instrumental directions such as "quasi-trombe" and "quasi-celli". The Spanish composer Joaquín Turina wrote in 1935 his "Concerto Without Orchestra" (Spanish: Concierto sin orquesta), Op. 88. The Russian composer and