Anatoly Liadov

pianosintheparks.com  – Anatol Konstantinovich Liadov was born in 1855 in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire, into a family of eminent Russian musicians. He was taught informally by his conductor step-father Konstantin Lyadov [ru] from 1860 to 1868, and then in 1870 entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory to study piano and violin.

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Anatol Konstantinovich Liadov had his first music lessons from his father, a noted Russian conductor, before being admitted to the St. Petersburg Conservatory with piano and violin as principal subjects. He took part in the composition classes of Rimsky-Korsakov, but was expelled because of too many unexplained absences. Readmitted two years later he easily passed the graduation exams. He taught at the conservatory from 1878, and was highly regarded as a composer and teacher, but at the same time built on his reputation for being somewhat unreliable. Liadov was apparently incapable of completing any large-scale works; this inability of his gave the young Stravinsky the opportunity to launch an international career with the ballet The Firebird, a commission originally received by Liadov. His miniatures, however, still hold their place in the repertoire. Liadov wrote quite a lot of piano pieces and a number of songs, a few choruses and about a dozen orchestral works, some of which are fragments of an unfinished opera.