Autograph Letter Signed in Russian with Translation to Nikolai Karlovich (Alexander Konstantinovich, 1865-1936, Russian Composer, Music Teacher and Conductor)

saying that they had "arrived in Paris a week ago. We had a calm and very pleasant crossing, but a very long one... we took a roundabout course and called at the Port of Vego, in North West Spain... I should like to meet you here, and shall therefore be glad if you will let me know when you expect to be in Paris. They couldn't tell me at Koussevitsky's publishing-house, and I was only able to get your address. On board the boat, I made a clean copy of the first movement of the quartet. The others are getting on gradually, but in two weeks time, I shall have to interrupt the work, in order to go to Poland and Prague. I walk a good deal in the Bois de Boulogne and St. Cloud, and yesterday, I spent several hours at St. Germain. The sea-air was undoubtedly beneficial to me, here, I don't feel so well again...", 2 sides 8vo., 15 Boulevard Suchet, Paris 16, 8th March The recipient is Nikolai Karlovich MEDTNER (1880-1951, Russian Composer and Virtuoso Pianist). After a period of comparative obscurity in the 25 years immediately after his death, he is now becoming recognised as one of the most significant Russian composers for the piano Glazunov was director of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory between 1905 and 1928 and was instrumental in the reorganisation of the institute into the Petrograd Conservatory, then the Leningrad Conservatory, following the Bolshevik Revolution. He continued as head of the Conservatory until 1930, though he had left the Soviet Union in 1928 and did not return. The best-known student under his tenure during the early Soviet years was Dmitri Shostakovich. The composition mentioned is his last string quartet.