Aleksandr Glazunov

Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov was a Russian composer, music teacher, and conductor of the late Russian Romantic period. He was director of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory between 1905 and 1928 and was instrumental in the reorganization of the institute into the Petrograd Conservatory, then the Leningrad Conservatory, following the Bolshevik Revolution. He continued as head of the Conservatory until 1930, though he had left the Soviet Union in 1928 and did not return. The best-known student under his tenure during the early Soviet years was Dmitri Shostakovich.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article on Alexander Glazunov.

From the period sources

Aleksandr Glazunov, a prolific instrumental composer, devoted himself wholly to music after studying at the Polytechnic Institute in St. Petersburg until 1883, according to A Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (1900). His musical path was significantly shaped by his acquaintance with Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov in 1880, with the latter serving as his principal teacher. Glazunov’s First Symphony premiered in 1881 and was notably performed again in 1884 at Weimar under Franz Liszt’s auspices. He gained international recognition early, conducting his Second Symphony in Paris in 1889 and his Fourth Symphony at a Philharmonic concert in London.

Beyond his compositional work, Glazunov was also active as a conductor, leading the Russian Symphony Concerts in St. Petersburg in 1896-97 alongside Rimsky-Korsakov and Liadov (A Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 1900). He was deeply involved with the publishing house founded by Mitrofan Petrovitch Beliaiev, which was established “solely for works by young Russian composers” and later constituted as a foundation to aid and encourage struggling talent. Glazunov was named to the committee of Russian composers, along with Rimsky-Korsakov and Liadoff, tasked with conducting this foundation after Beliaiev’s death in 1904 (A Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 1905). Later, from 1909 to 1912, Glazunov served as director of the Petrograd Conservatory, subsequently returning to teach instrumentation and score-reading (Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians: American Supplement, 1920). He also completed two movements of Borodin’s Symphony in A minor and, with Rimsky-Korsakov, finished Borodin’s opera Prince Igor (The New Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians, 1924).