Anatoly Liadov

Anatoly Konstantinovich Liadov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on April 29, 1855, and died in Polinovka in the Novgorod District on August 16, 1914.

Almost too talented for his own good, Anatoly Liadov mastered many trades. A longtime teacher at St. Petersburg Conservatory, where his students included Sergei Prokofiev and others who would become major figures in Russian music, he also excelled as a pianist, conductor, editor, and composer. His friend, mentor, and colleague Rimsky-Korsakov believed deeply in Liadov’s talent and potential, calling him “talented past telling.”

But, known for “loose living” and a short attention span, Liadov was notoriously lazy and easily distracted. Shy and retiring, he failed to capitalize on some important opportunities. Most famously, Ballets Russes impresario Serge Diaghilev gave him the plum commission of scoring a new ballet—The Firebird—for a dazzling Paris premiere, but Liadov never managed to produce a single note. This left the door open for Igor Stravinsky, who never suffered from a lack of self-confidence—and the rest is history. In a fond recollection, Stravinsky called Liadov “a darling man…sweet and charming,” and “the most progressive of the musicians of his generation.” Liadov championed the avant-garde music of Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915), whose influence can be heard in the glacially slow harmonic rhythms, shimmering trills, and mystical atmosphere of Liadov’s symphonic poems The Enchanted Lake and Kikimora.

Liadov excelled in small forms. Stravinsky commented that “He composed little, because he worked slowly—one might say minutely, as if with a magnifying glass.” The longest of his compositions (Eight Russian Folk Songs for Orchestra) lasts less than 15 minutes. Most are much shorter. For piano he wrote numerous tiny mazurkas, bagatelles, preludes, and what he called “biryulki,” named after tiny carved wooden toys used in a Russian children’s game. Like other Russian composers of his era, Liadov was torn between Western models like Chopin, Liszt, and Schumann on the one hand and the Russian folk music tradition on the other.

To a large extent, Liadov shared the nationalistic aesthetic views of the “Mighty Handful” composers (Rimsky, Balakirev, Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky) and was even known as the group’s “sixth” junior member. Living through one of the most turbulent and violent eras in Russian history, Liadov avoided engagement with political and social issues and sought refuge in the fantasy world of Russian fairy tales and legends and the severe beauty of the Russian natural world.

In the first decade of the 20th century, Liadov wrote his best-known orchestral works, all inspired by folk music and legend: Baba Yaga (1904), Eight Russian Folk Songs for Orchestra (1906), The Enchanted Lake (1908), and Kikimora (1909).