well-known artist in his day. He had a beautiful voice and an amazing technique, acquired in studying by the Italian method at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, in addition to great dramatic talent—a rare attribute among opera singers at that time.

About the same time I heard Glinka's second opera, Ruslan and Ludmilla, at a gala performance given to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. My father took the part of Farlaf, which was one of the best in his repertoire. It was a memorable evening for me. Besides the excitement I felt at hearing this music that I already loved to distraction, it was my good fortune to catch a glimpse in the foyer of Peter Tchaikovsky, the idol of the Russian public, whom I had never seen before and was never to see again. He had just conducted the first audition of his new symphony—the Pathetic—in St. Petersburg. A fortnight later my mother took me to a concert where the same symphony was played in memory of its composer, who had been suddenly carried off by cholera. Deeply though I was impressed by the unexpected death of the great musician, I was far from realizing at the moment that this glimpse of the living Tchaikovsky—fleeting though it was—would become one of my most treasured memories. I shall have occasion later to tell my readers more of Tchaikovsky, of his music, and of my struggles on its behalf with some of my confreres, who obstinately persist in a heresy which will not permit them to recognize as “authentic” Russian music anything outside the work of the Five (name given to a group composed of Balakirev, Moussorgsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Cui).

At this point I am simply recording a personal memory of the celebrated composer, for whom my admiration has continued to grow with the development of my musical consciousness.

I think that the beginning of my conscious life as artist and musician dates from this time.

II

I picture the first years of my adolescence as a series of irksome duties and the perpetual frustration of all my desires and aspirations. The constraint of the school to which I had just gone filled me with aversion. I hated the classes and tasks, and I was but a very poor pupil, my lack of industry giving rise to reproaches which only increased my dislike for the school and its lessons. Nor did I find any compensation for all this unpleasantness in those school friendships which might have made things easier. During all my school life, I never came across anyone who had any real attraction for me, something essential being always absent. Was it my fault, or was it simply bad luck? I cannot say; but the result was that I felt very lonely. Although I was brought up with my younger brother, of whom I was very fond, I was never able to open my heart to him, because, in the first place, my aspirations were too vague to be formulated, and secondly, in my innermost being I feared, notwithstanding our mutual affection, that there would be misunderstandings which would have deeply wounded my pride.

The only place where my budding ambition had any encouragement was in the house of my uncle Ielatchitch, my mother's brother-in-law. Both he and his children were fervent music lovers, with a general tendency to champion very advanced work, or what was then considered to be such. My uncle belonged to the class of society then predominating in St. Petersburg, which was composed of well-to-do land-owners, officials of the higher ranks, magistrates, barristers, and the like. They all prided themselves on their liberalism, extolled progress, and considered it the thing to profess so-called “advanced” opinions in politics, art, and all branches of social life. The reader can easily see from this what their mentality was like: a compulsory atheism, a somewhat bold affirmation of “the Rights of Man,” an attitude of opposition to “tyrannical” government, the cult of materialistic science, and, at the same time, admiration for Tolstoy and his amateur Christianizing. Special artistic tastes went with this mentality, and it is easy to see what they looked for and appreciated in music. Obviously naturalism was the order of the day, pushed to the point of realistic expression and accompanied, as was to be expected, by popular and nationalistic tendencies and admiration for folklore. And it was on such grounds that these sincere music lovers believed that they must justify their enthusiasm—quick and spontaneous though it was—for works of a Moussorgsky!

It would, however, be unfair to imply that this set had no appreciation of symphonic music; Brahms was admired, and a little later Bruckner was discovered, and a special transcription of Wagner's tetralogy was played as a pianoforte duet. Was it Glazounov, adopted son of the Five, with his heavy German academic symphonies, or the lyrical symphonies of Tchaikovsky, or the epic symphonies of Borodin, or the symphonic poems of Rimsky-Korsakov, that imbued this group with its taste for symphonism? Who can say? But, however that may be, all these ardently devoted themselves to that type of music.

It was thanks to this environment that I got to know the great German composers. As for the French moderns, they had not yet penetrated into this circle, and it was only later that I had a chance to hear them.

In so far as school life permitted, I used to go to symphony concerts and to recitals by famous Russian or foreign pianists, and in this way I heard Josef Hofmann, whose serious, precise, and finished playing filled me with such enthusiasm that I redoubled my zeal in studying the piano. Among other celebrities who appeared in St. Petersburg at the time, I remember Sophie Menter, Eugen d'Albert, Reisenauer, and such of our own famous virtuosi as the pianist Annette Essipova, the wife of Leschetitzky, and the violinist, Leopold Auer.

There were also great symphonic concerts given by two important societies—the Imperial Musical Society and the Russian Symphony Concerts—founded by Mitrophan Belaieff, that great patron and publisher of music.

The concerts of the Imperial Society were often conducted by Napravnik, whom I already knew through the Imperial Opera, of which he was for many years the distinguished conductor. It seems to me that in spite of his austere conservatism he was the type of conductor which even today I prefer to all others. Certainty and unbending rigor in the exercise of his art; complete contempt for all affectation and showy effects alike in the presentation of the work and in gesticulation; not the slightest concession to the public; and added to that, iron discipline, mastery of the first order, an infallible ear and memory, and, as a result, perfect clarity and objectivity in the rendering…. What better can one imagine? Hans Richter, a much better-known and more celebrated conductor, whom I heard a little later when he came to St. Petersburg to conduct the Wagner operas, had the same qualities. He also belonged to that rare type of conductor whose sole ambition is to penetrate the spirit and the aim of the composer, and to submerge himself in the score.

I used to go also to the Belaieff Symphony Concerts. Belaieff had formed a group of musicians whom he helped in every way: giving them material assistance, publishing their works and having them performed at his concerts. The leading figures in this group were Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazounov, who were joined by Liadov and, later on, Tcherepnin, the brothers Blumenfeld, Sokolov, and other pupils of Rimsky-Korsakov. This group, though the offspring of the Five, rapidly changed, and, perhaps without realizing it, developed a new school, little by little taking possession of the Conservatoire in place of the old academicians who had directed it since its foundation by