Gustav Kross

He is primarily remembered for being the soloist of the first, negatively-received Russian performance of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.

[1] In 1862 he was among the first group of students at the fledgling Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied under Anton Rubinstein[2][3] and Adolf von Henselt.

Among his pupils were Vladimir Demyansky and Anna Ornatskaya, who were both early teachers of Sergei Rachmaninoff.

This occurred in Saint Petersburg on 1/13 November 1875,[6] just under three weeks after its world premiere by Hans von Bülow in Boston, Mass., in the United States (25 October).

Tchaikovsky referred to it as "an atrocious cacophony",[7] and the critics were similarly negative, but they extended their remarks to the quality of the concerto itself.