For most European musicians touring the United States in the nineteenth century, New York was the geographic point of arrival—the musical capital in which to make an American debut, establish a base, and launch a national tour and the city that could support the greatest quantity of performances and appreciate the greatest variety of musical offerings. For these reasons, New York became a home away from home for many visiting virtuosos. This was certainly true for the pianist Sigismund Thalberg, who lavished the city with eighty appearances during his two-year tour of the United States from 1856 to 1858 and presented a wider array of his repertoire there than anywhere else in the country.

Thalberg was one of numerous pianists who made substantial American tours in the nineteenth century, and each tour illustrates New York's central role for visiting performers and reveals details about the performance and reception of music in that city. The two most important pianists to precede Thalberg to the United States were the flamboyant Leopold de Meyer (1816–1883) and the more refined (and famous) Henri Herz. De Meyer's tour of 1845–1847 exposed the seamy side of marketing music in New York that was already well in place by the 1840s. The use of claques, deadheads, and self-purchased floral tributes, as well as charges of puffery, sabotage, and blackmail, kept journalists busy but did not prevent listeners from flocking to hear the mesmerizing pianist at the cavernous Tabernacle, then the principal concert hall in New York.

Herz's considerably longer tour of 1846–1850 included appearances in Gold Rush California. Arriving in Boston, then the terminus of the Cunard line, Herz refused to make his American debut there, insisting that New York was the place to begin. The pianist soon engaged the neophyte impresario Bernard Ullman as his manager, reflecting a trend toward a more professional approach to marketing concerts. Ullman later managed the American tours of Thalberg and Hans von Bülow.

Thalberg arrived in New York in 1856, two decades after his triumphs in Paris that included a celebrated showdown with Liszt, which resulted in a draw. His reputation and music had been well-known for some time in the New World.