Eduard Nápravník

In November 1875, Nápravník conducted the first performance in Russia of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto with Gustav Kross as soloist (whose playing was described by the composer as "an atrocious cacophony").

Nápravník is also well known for leading the second — and overwhelmingly persuasive — performance of Tchaikovsky's Pathétique symphony on 6/18 November 1893, twelve days after the composer's death.

[2] The premiere, under the composer's baton, had not fared so well, partly due to the audience's and the orchestra's unfamiliarity with a work that contained so many novelties, compositionally speaking, and partly due to Tchaikovsky's conducting (although Rimsky protested after that second performance, in his autobiography Moy Muzikalny Zhizn [My Musical Life], that the first performance had also gone well under the baton of its creator).

Under Nápravník's baton, however, and under the solemn influence of Tchaikovsky's sudden passing, the work was seen as a masterpiece with an overwhelming emotional message.

[3] Of Nápravník's own four operas the most successful was Dubrovsky (1894, staged 1895) written to a Russian libretto by Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky after the story by Alexander Pushkin.