Why is MIDI playback affected by sample rate?

Cubase
1

I created a new project from a template and set it’s sampling rate to 44.1 kHZ, then I imported a MIDI file from an old project. When I tried to play the imported MIDI tracks, they played incorrectly, MIDI event timing was wrong. But when I changed the rate to 96 kHZ, everything played correctly.

I don’t understand how audio sampling rate may affect MIDI timing: I din’t even record any audio parts (although project had a few empy audio tracks), so it’s only MIDI parts that are present. Why chaning sampling rate affect their playback?

2

Has it actually changed the tempo in Cubase’s Tempo track?

3

No it didn’t but I imported a tempo track from an olde project to get the original tempo and all tempo changes.