Alexander Glazunov

Classical Music / Composer's Datebook: August 10

 

Brief biograpahy of Alexander Glazunov, Russian composer of the late Romantic period. He completed the third act of Borodin's Prince Igor, among others, after the composer's death.

 

Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov was among the late Russian Romantic composers like Rachmaninoff. For almost three years, he studied privately with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov at Balakirev's suggestion.  A son of a successful publisher, Russian composer Alexander Glazunov was born on August 10, 1865, in St. Petersburg. He mother was a good amateur pianist who had studied with Mily Balakirev, a leader of a group of Russian composers known as "The Mighty Handful" or "The Five."   

 

Young Glazunov

When he was 16 years old, Glazunov showed his talent when he wrote his first symphony which was conducted by Mily Balakirev. He became a protege of the latter. At the opening of his performance, Glazunov was befriended by a wealthy patron, a timber merchant Mitrofan Belayev, who started a publishing house to support young Russian hopefuls. From the 1880s, he travelled widely in Paris and London, conducting his own works. In Weimar, he also met with Franz Liszt, who had some influence in his music. 

 

Career

In 1899, he was appointed professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and after six years, he was appointed as director there until leaving the Soviet Union in 1928, when he went to live in Paris but before he did, he first went to Vienna, then toured Europe and the US.  Dmitry Shostakovich was one of his prominent students in St Petersburg.  

Glazunov - The Seasons. Edo de Waart conducts the Minnesota Orchestra. YouTube, uploaded by winkle522000. Accessed August 10, 2023.  

 

Like some of his contemporaries, Glazunov also suffered hardships during the Russian Revolution and settled in other places, of which he did, in Paris.

A notable trivia, it has been said that Glazunov ruined the premiere of Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony by conducting while drunk. 

 

Glazunov's Major works

1881 Symphony No.1 (first performed and conducted by Balakirev. Glazunov was 16 years old)

1882 String Quarter in D major

1883 Serenader No.1

1884 Serenade No.2

1885 Stenka Razin, tone poem

1886 Symphony No.2

1889 The Forest, fantasia

1891 Oriental Rhapsody

1892 Symphony No.3

1893 Symphony No.4

1895 Symphony No.5

1896 Symphony No.6

1897 Raymonda, ballet

1901 The Seasons, ballet

1902 Symphony No.7

1904 Violin Concerto

1905 Symphony No.8

1909 Symphony No.9 (left unfinished, first performed 1948)

1911 Piano concerto

1933 Epic Poem

1936 Saxophone Concerto

 

Legacy  of Glazunov

Glazunov has a significant place in the history of Russian music for he reconciled Russianism and Europeanism - by absorbing Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral virtuosity, Balakirev’s nationalism,  Tchaikovsky’s lyricism, Borodin’s epic grandeur and Taneyev’s contrapuntal skill. His music  has a distinctive Russian national school of composition, at the same time and absorbed  influences of western Europe. He completed the act three of Borodin's famous Prince Igor after Borodin's death, collaborated in other works, and made more arrangements.

Alexander Glazunov died in Paris in1936, the same day that Mussorgsky and Johann Sebastian Bach were born, in different centuries.   

 

Image Credit:

Alexander Glazunov (before 1913). Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain

 

Resources: 

Dictionary of Composers and their Music by Eric Gilder (1987)

The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music, edited by Stanley Sadie (1994)

 

 

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