Tchaikovsky
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Hans von Bülow

German conductor, pianist and composer, born Hans Guido von Bülow, on 8 January 1830 at Dresden.

Bülow's musical studies began relatively late, and was not until the age of nine that he began to receive formal piano lessons. After studying law in Leipzig and Dresden, he abandoned his legal career in 1850 to make his debut as a conductor in Zürich. In 1851 he began piano studies at Weimar with Franz Liszt, whose daughter Cosima he went on to marry in 1857. After teaching in Berlin (1855-1864) and giving piano recitals, he was appointed Hofkapellmeister in Munich in 1865, where he conducted the premieres of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (1865) and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868).

After his wife Cosima left him for Richard Wagner, Bülow resigned his post in Munich in 1869, and began to tour widely in Europe, Russia and the United States. It was in Boston in 1875 that he premiered Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, which the composer dedicated to him. Although closely associated with the New German School of music, Von Bülow also championed Tchaikovsky's works, and conducted the premiere of his Suite No. 3 in Saint Petersburg in 1885.

Following a long period of ill health, Hans von Bülow died in Cairo, Egypt, on 12 February 1894, aged 64.