Short answers, pulled from the story.
Anton Rubinstein was a Russian pianist, composer, and conductor who lived from 1829 to 1894. He ranks among the great nineteenth-century keyboard virtuosos and founded the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, the first music school in Russia. He is also remembered as the composition teacher of Tchaikovsky.
Rubinstein's historical recitals were seven consecutive concerts covering the entire history of piano music. Each program was enormous; the Beethoven concert alone included eight sonatas. He performed the series throughout Russia, Eastern Europe, and the United States, concluding his American tour with all seven recitals over nine days in New York City in May 1873.
Rubinstein toured the United States during the 1872-73 season under contract with Steinway and Sons, giving 215 concerts over 239 days at 200 dollars per concert, payable in gold. He described the experience as "slavery" and refused a second tour when asked. The earnings nevertheless left him financially secure for the rest of his life.
Rachmaninoff first heard Rubinstein's historical concerts at age twelve and later told his biographer Oscar von Riesemann that the playing "gripped my whole imagination and had a marked influence on my ambition as a pianist." He said it was not Rubinstein's technique but his "profound, spiritually refined musicianship" that singled him out as the most original and unequalled pianist in the world.
Rubinstein resigned from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory twice. His first resignation in 1867 followed intense faculty dissension linked to tensions with the Balakirev nationalist camp. His second and final resignation in 1891 came after Imperial authorities demanded that admissions and annual student prizes be allocated along ethnic quotas rather than purely by merit, quotas designed to disadvantage Jews.
Rubinstein wrote no fewer than twenty operas, five piano concertos, six symphonies, and substantial chamber and solo piano music. His best-known works are the opera The Demon, based on a Romantic poem by Lermontov, his Piano Concerto No. 4, and his Symphony No. 2, known as The Ocean. His Fourth Piano Concerto directly influenced Tchaikovsky's piano concertos, especially the first.