In 1835/1836 Liszt was staying in Switzerland with his mistress Marie Comtesse d'Agoult. He published his bold, avant-garde musical portrayal of his travels in the Swiss mountains in 1842 under the title Album d'un Voyageur. Around 1850 the one-time enfant terrible had become a mature composer. Liszt reworked his early compositions and published them in 1855 as Années de Pèlerinage, Erstes Jahr, Schweiz. The showpiece in the collection is the naturalistic and poetic Vallée d'Obermann after the novel by Senancourt; the early version is also reproduced in the appendix to our edition (single edition with extensive commentary of the 1855 version HN 813).