Alexander Glazunov
Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov (10 August 1865 – 21 March 1936) was a Russian composer, conductor, pianist, and teacher. Born into a wealthy publishing family in Saint Petersburg, he was a musical prodigy who began composing at eleven. He first studied with Nikolai Yelenkovsky and, after meeting Mily Balakirev in 1879, became a private pupil of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. He completed the equivalent of a conservatory curriculum in little more than a year. After two years of instruction he began his First Symphony, completed in 1882, the same year as his First String Quartet; both works soon won recognition. The successful premiere of the symphony, when he was sixteen, attracted the patron Mitrofan Belyayev, who supported him and introduced him to the international musical world. In 1884 Glazunov met Pyotr Tchaikovsky, with whom he formed a close friendship.
Glazunov became a central figure in the Belyayev Circle, synthesizing the nationalist, folklore-oriented traditions of the Mighty Handful with the more Western-oriented approach associated with Tchaikovsky. He was a brilliant orchestrator, a skilled contrapuntist, and a master of musical form. His exceptional musical memory enabled him, with Rimsky-Korsakov, to help complete several unfinished works by Alexander Borodin after Borodin's death: Glazunov wrote down the overture to Prince Igor from memory, helped complete the opera's third act, and orchestrated Borodin's Third Symphony.
His conducting debut took place in October 1887. He subsequently appeared widely in Western Europe, promoting both his own music and that of fellow Russian composers, including at the Russian concerts held during the 1889 Paris Exposition. His output includes eight completed symphonies, the ballet Raymonda, concertos for violin, piano, cello, and saxophone, chamber music, and choral and theatrical works. Among his notable later compositions are the Concerto ballata for cello and orchestra, the Concerto for Alto Saxophone and String Orchestra, and a quartet for four saxophones. His piano writing was notably orchestral in conception; the Trois Études, Op. 31, has remained a teaching work.
Glazunov became professor of instrumentation and counterpoint at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1899 and served as its director from 1905 to 1928. He maintained the institution's standing and autonomy and personally supported students, among them Dmitri Shostakovich. In 1928 he travelled to Vienna as a juror for a Franz Schubert composition competition and did not return. He settled in Paris with his wife Olga and his stepdaughter Elena, who performed his two piano concertos. He continued to compose and conduct despite declining health, and died in Paris at the age of seventy. Initially buried in France, he was reinterred at Tikhvin Cemetery in Leningrad in 1972.