By age fifteen, he had mastered Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto in G minor and finished a piano reduction of a string quartet by Glazunov, who reportedly considered Stravinsky to be unmusical and thought little of his skills.

Also in 1884, Belyayev rented out a hall and hired an orchestra to play Glazunov's First Symphony plus an orchestral suite Glazunov had just composed.

Drunk or not, Glazunov had insufficient rehearsal time with the symphony and, while he loved the art of conducting, he never fully mastered it.

They had long associated Glazunov with the music of the past rather than of the present, so they thought he had already been dead for many years.

When the applicant had finished, Glazunov said, " If I'm not mistaken, you applied a few years ago.

By the time Glazunov wrote his Seventh Symphony, his duties at the Conservatory had slowed his rate of composition.

Ironically, both Glazunov and Rachmaninoff, whose first symphony Glazunov supposedly had conducted so poorly at its premiere ( according to the composer ), were considered " old-fashioned " in their later years.

In his Memoirs Stravinsky called Glazunov one of the most disagreeable men he had ever met, adding that the only bad omen he had experienced about the initial ( private ) performance of his symphony was Glazunov having come to him afterwards saying, " Very nice, very nice.

Glazunov, who had lost a tremendous amount of weight and was living as hard a life as many in that time, asked instead that the government send firewood to the Conservatory so the students could study more easily.

Shostakovich claimed Glazunov never asked these musicians to play for him ; he felt everyone had a right to live where they pleased and art would not suffer as a result.

The immediate parallel to the 19-year-old composer presenting his first symphony was Alexander Glazunov, himself a child prodigy who had his First Symphony performed at an even younger age.

As director of the Petrograd Conservatory, Glazunov had followed Shostakovich's progress since his entrance at age 13.

The Glazunov suite upon which this original version was based had only four Chopin pieces ; Fokine wanted to use a Waltz as an addition to the Suite and was able to get Glazunov to orchestrate this to create his ballet, also called " Chopiniana ".

" Glazunov had been Rimsky-Korsakov's student in orchestration as well as composition.

By the reports of many present, the rehearsal that Rimsky-Korsakov had heard, conducted by his friend and musical protégé Glazunov, was both a disaster as a performance and a horrific travesty of the score.

" What makes this comment strange in itself is that Glazunov himself may have anticipated Rachmaninoff's musical style in his own Second Symphony, which he had written in 1886.

) Nevertheless, it might be surprising that Glazunov had conducted a competent performance of Rachmaninoff's orchestral fantasy The Rock the previous year.

While critics in St. Petersburg had actually given good reviews to The Rock when Glazunov conducted it, a symphony was another matter.

** Le Carnaval ( 1910 )— music by Robert Schumann ( orchestrated by Aleksandr Glazunov, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Anatole Liadov, and Alexander Tcherepnin ), choreography by Michel Fokine, set and costumes by Leon Bakst.

On the near eighty year old Petipa presented one of his greatest ballets, Raymonda, set in Hungary during the middle ages to the music of Alexander Glazunov, which premiered to great success.

Glazunov was acknowledged as a great prodigy in his field and, with the help of his mentor and friend Rimsky-Korsakov, finished some of Alexander Borodin's great works, the most famous being the Third Symphony and the opera Prince Igor, including the popular Polovtsian Dances.

Glazunov wrote three ballets ; eight symphonies and many other orchestral works ; five concertos ( 2 for piano ; 1 for violin ; 1 for cello ; 1 for saxophone ); seven string quartets ; two piano sonatas and other piano pieces ; miscellaneous instrumental pieces ; and some songs.

Because, like Glazunov, Shostakovich was still a teenager when he wrote his First Symphony, it is only natural that some critics compare it with Glazunov's First Symphony.

They were introduced to composer Alexander Glazunov, a professor at the Conservatory, who asked to see Prokofiev and his music ; Glazunov was so impressed that he urged Prokofiev's mother that her son apply to the Saint Petersburg Conservatory.

During the 1925-30 recordings, Hertz conducted music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Léo Delibes, Alexander Glazunov, Charles Gounod, Fritz Kreisler, Franz Liszt, Alexandre Luigini, Felix Mendelssohn, Moritz Moszkowski, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Franz Schubert and Carl Maria von Weber.

* March 27 – The première of Sergei Rachmaninoff's First Symphony is a complete disaster, leaving many wondering whether Alexander Glazunov, the conductor for the event, was drunk or just disliked the music so much that he did not care about a good performance.

Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov ( 10 August 1865 – 21 March 1936 ) was a Russian composer of the late Russian Romantic period, music teacher and conductor.

Glazunov was significant in that he successfully reconciled nationalism and cosmopolitanism in Russian music.

In 1885 Belyayev started his own publishing house in Leipzig, Germany, initially publishing music by Glazunov, Lyadov, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin at his own expense.

Glazunov taught only chamber music by the time Shostakovich was a student.

Glazunov sat at his desk, not interrupting the music being played during class.

" Later, Stravinsky amended his recollection of this incident, adding that when Glazunov passed him in the aisle after the performance, he told Stravinsky, " Rather heavy instrumentation for such music.

For his part, Glazunov was not supportive of the modern direction Stravinsky's music took.

Unlike Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov was not anxious about the potential dead-end Russian music might take by following academia strictly, nor did he share Rimsky-Korsakov's grudging respect for new ideas and techniques.

Because of that, its classical repertoire has broadened to include fringe works, such as the symphonies of Nikolai Myaskovsky, contemporary classical music, and the works of lesser-known composers, such as Alexander Glazunov and Louis Spohr.

* Raymonda ( music by Aleksandr Glazunov, 1898 )

* Les ruses d ’ amour ( music by Glazunov )

Its original choreography was by Michel Fokine, with music by Frédéric Chopin orchestrated by Alexander Glazunov.

Portrait of M. P. Belyayev by Ilya Repin ( 1886 ) Lyadov introduced timber millionaire and philanthropist Mitrofan Belyayev to the music of the teenage Alexander Glazunov.

He published music by Glazunov, Lyadov, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin at his own expense.

* The Seasons ( ballet ), a ballet by Marius Petipa to the music of Alexander Glazunov

( Glazunov later demonstrated his low regard for Rachmaninoff's music by leaving a copy of the score for the Fourth Piano Concerto in a Paris taxicab in 1930.