Alexander Glasunow | Composers

Alexander Konstantinowitsch Glasunow was born in 1865 and showed a striking musical talent from a very early age, which was furthered by his teacher Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov. He was taken as a member of the composers’ coterie of the musically charmed entrepreneur and later music publisher Mitrofan Petrowitsch Beljajew, who published Glasunow’s 1st symphony and supported him for the rest of his life. Glasunow admired composers like Brahms and his close friend Tchaikovsky. Especially the fusion of Russian music and West European elements in Tchaikovsky’s compositions influenced Glasunow’s compositional style. He managed to bridge the two rival movements of that time: On the one hand “national Russian” music and on the other hand western influenced music. Glasunow was a master of classical composing techniques and set great value on traditional musical forms. First as a teacher and since 1905 as director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, he taught and experienced a new generation of young composers. Amongst his students were Dimitri Schostakowitsch and Sergei Prokofiew. While that rising generation conquered the world with a new, partly experimental musical language, Glasunow stayed true to his traditional style of composing.