![]() It contains a wealth of contrapuntal detail and that exuberance which naturally accompanies a young composer exploring a new medium. ![]() Using the notes which spell the diminutive of his own name, SASCHA (in German notation these letters stand for E flat, A, E flat, C, B, A), it is great bravura writing, offering no concessions to the performer. Written in 1883, it is a remarkably assured work containing many of the pianistic devices which were to become a feature of his later piano-writing. The Suite on the name ‘SASCHA’, Op 2, is Glazunov’s first published piano composition and is dedicated to his mother, Elena Glazunova. With the death of Tchaikovsky in 1893, and that of Anton Rubinstein in the following year, Glazunov took centre stage and became the leader of the new musical establishment. Three years after Borodin’s death, Glazunov, still only twenty-five years old, took over the post of conductor at the Russian Symphony Concerts from Rimsky-Korsakov who was now turning increasingly to opera. Within this vacuum, Glazunov’s reputation grew. Balakirev, meanwhile, had become increasingly estranged from his colleagues because of his continuing obsession with nationalism and his difficult temperament. César Cui had become distanced from his former friends largely because of his vitriolic, if entertaining, music reviews (his description of Rachmaninov’s first symphony as a ‘programme symphony on the Seven Plagues of Egypt’ is a good example of the sort of remark that lost him the goodwill of his fellow composers). The group had now lost its two most original, if hardly prolific, composers. Their dominance, however, proved to be short-lived for, in 1887, with Mussorgsky already dead, ‘The Mighty Handful’ effectively passed into history with the unexpected death of Borodin. An influential and powerful group, comprising Balakirev together with Mussorgsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov and Cui, became known as ‘The Mighty Handful’. Eventually Balakirev’s views came to influence a whole generation of composers in St Petersburg. ![]() Rubinstein looked to the west for inspiration Balakirev, on the other hand, looked towards the east and Russia’s own heritage of folk song and ethnic diversity. Though both paid homage to the earlier nationalistic composer Glinka, they differed in their views about the direction which Russian music should take. ![]() In 1865, the year of Glazunov’s birth (and also that of the composers Carl Nielsen, Paul Dukas and Jean Sibelius), the Russian musical establishment was dominated by the opposing figures of Balakirev and Anton Rubinstein. ![]()
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