Anatoly Liadov

Anatoly Liadov (1855–1914) was a Russian composer and teacher from the circle around Rimsky-Korsakov, with whom he studied at the St Petersburg Conservatory. He went on to teach there himself, and his pupils included Prokofiev and Myaskovsky. A miniaturist of exquisite refinement, he is remembered above all for a handful of short, atmospheric orchestral tone poems on Russian fairy-tale subjects (The Enchanted Lake, Baba-Yaga, Kikimora) and for his arrangements of Russian folk songs. He also had a reputation for idleness. The story goes that he was so slow to start a ballet Diaghilev had proposed that the impresario turned instead to the young Stravinsky, who wrote The Firebird, though there is no evidence that Liadov ever accepted the commission. A perfectionist who worked on a small scale, he left a modest output, but his finest pieces are jewels of orchestral colour.