Classical master who was one of Johannes Brahms' earliest supporters and a foremost authority on Beethoven.
He relocated to Germany to advance his musical education. Once there, he studied with Max Schwarz and Hans von Bülow.
He was asked by Composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and musician Vasily Safonov in 1893 to come to Moscow and play Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto in B-flat minor, Op. 23.
He and his wife, Austrian Actress Irene Triesch, were married in 1904.
He was the next-to-last surviving pupil of Franz Liszt when he died. He was a Liszt student in three different cities: Weimar, Rome, and London.
