As a composer, Glazunov was highly respected in that era. Even the irreverent Prokofiev was impressed for a while by his eight symphonies and at first enjoyed playing them in a four-handed version with his conservatory friend Myaskovsky. Pianists eagerly performed Glazunov’s two piano concertos, and his melodic Violin Concerto (1904), which enjoyed great popularity among violinists. And everyone hailed Glazunov’s romantic ballet,
Everyone knew that Glazunov gave his all to the conservatory. As Prokofiev recalled, “he would either be off to see Procurator Korsak to intercede on behalf of a student who was going to be exiled for revolutionary activity, or appealing for a residence permit for a talented Jew or giving away his director’s salary for scholarships for the students.”33 And Glazunov remained just as dogged a defender of the conservatory after the Bolsheviks came to power. Undoubtedly, the main reason why he did not emigrate immediately after the revolution was the desire to defend his beloved conservatory from the destruction that threatened it. Together with his students, Glazunov went through difficult times; he lost weight and grew haggard, his worn suit hanging from his once corpulent body as if from a hanger. But the director continued the ritual inspections of the institution entrusted to him, albeit without the cigar, a commodity impossible to obtain in those years.
The Bolsheviks were impressed by the composer’s European fame, and Glazunov managed even in the hardest of times to obtain special food parcels for particularly gifted students. Viktor Shklovsky wrote down the following story, which was recounted to him by Maxim Gorky, whom the conservatory director visited in the hungry year of 1921.
“Yes,” Glazunov says, “I need a food parcel, even though our candidate is very young—he was born in 1906.”
“A violinist? They start young. Or a pianist?”
“A composer.”
“How old is he?”
“He’ll be fifteen. The son of a music teacher. He brought me his work.”
“You like it?”
“Its awful! It’s the first music I can’t hear just by reading the score.”
“Then why have you come?”
“I don’t like it, but that’s not the point. The future belongs to this boy, not to me. Well, I don’t like it. Too bad. This will be our music, and we have to get an academy food parcel for him.”
“I’m putting him on the list. Name?”
“Shostakovich.”34
Unlike Stravinsky and Prokofiev, Shostakovich did not study with Rimsky-Korsakov. In 1919, when the thirteen-year-old Mitya Shostakovich entered the Petrograd Conservatory, Rimsky-Korsakov had been dead for eleven years. In that period the Petersburg school of composition was often called the “school of Rimsky-Korsakov-Glazunov.” As the caretaker of Rimsky-Korsakov’s legacy, Glazunov’s influence on Petrograd’s musical life was all-encompassing.
It was Glazunov who appreciated Prokofiev’s childhood works and insisted that he enter the Petersburg Conservatory; it was then that he gave the remarkable thirteen-year-old a copy of Glinka’s score for his
Glazunov was moved by Shostakovich’s talent and gave the young musician the highest grades on composition examinations (a five in the Russian five-point system), with remarks such as: “Exceptionally vivid and early-maturing gift. Worthy of awe and delight. Marvelous technical ability, interesting, original content (5+),” or “Vivid outstanding creative gift. In music much imagination and inventiveness. In a period of finding himself (5+).”35
