Glazunov

We see why Rimsky was impressed with Glazunov's first symphony. It is more controlled than Rimsky's own first, composed under Balakirev's idiosyncratic micromanagement. At the time (1881), Rimsky had decided to prioritize control over imagination. This was a necessary step in his personal growth, even though the results have mostly not been valued highly for their own sake. Three years later, Rimsky revised his first, sacrificing some, but really only a little bit, of its imaginativeness, but greatly improving its sound by transposing it from E-flat minor to E(-natural) minor.

Glazunov's first is indisputably a significant achievement for a 16-year-old composer. Form is hard, and he mostly nails it -- the tempo game in the finale is not an entirely successful experiment. Voice is hard, too, and there is very little of it. We could go two ways with that: we could say there is not enough, or we could be impressed that there is any. When presented with a false choice like that, it is always best to cheat, so let us adduce our knowledge of his subsequent work, which is...mostly anonymous. So I say "not enough"; your mileage may vary.

We must think that if Glazunov had been born, say, fifteen years later, Rimsky would have been less indulgent of this work. But perhaps Rimsky's judgment is altogether discredited by his rejection, motivated by personal animosity, of Balakirev's C-major symphony, a finer work than anything either Rimsky or Glazunov ever composed -- more imaginative and more controlled, and the control is not merely of received models.