Von Bülow was still not impressed. In a letter to Johannes Brahms in January 1891, he wrote: "Strauss's Burleske decidedly has some genius in it, but in other respects it is horrifying."[3] Despite this, he conducted the work that month in Berlin, with Eugen d'Albert as soloist.[2]
Strauss was offered a handsome sum by a publisher for the rights to the work, but he was still not convinced of its merits, so he declined. He was no doubt influenced in his own opinion of the work by von Bülow's opinion of it. A quarter of a century later he wrote about von Bülow: "For anyone who ever heard him play Beethoven or conduct Wagner, who attended one of his piano lessons or observed him in orchestra rehearsal, he inevitably became the model of all the shining virtues of a performing artist, and his touching sympathy for me, his influence on the development of my artistic abilities, were the decisive factors in my career." . (Wikipedia)