The Belyayev circle was a society of Russian musicians who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia between 1885 and 1908, and whose members included Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Glazunov, Vladimir Stasov, Anatoly Lyadov, Alexander Ossovsky, Witold Maliszewski, Nikolai Tcherepnin, Nikolay Sokolov, Alexander Winkler among others. The circle was named after Mitrofan Belyayev, a timber merchant and amateur musician who became a music philanthropist and publisher after hearing the music of the teenage Glazunov.
Portrait of Mitrofan Belyayev by Ilya Repin
Portrait of Alexander Glazunov by Ilya Repin, 1887
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Dmitri Shostakovich, 1925
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov
was a Russian composer, a member of the group of composers known as The Five. He was a master of orchestration. His best-known orchestral compositions—Capriccio Espagnol, the Russian Easter Festival Overture, and the symphonic suite Scheherazade—are staples of the classical music repertoire, along with suites and excerpts from some of his fifteen operas. Scheherazade is an example of his frequent use of fairy-tale and folk subjects.
Rimsky-Korsakov's birthplace in Tikhvin
Rimsky-Korsakov family coat of arms
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1856
Rimsky-Korsakov in 1866, when he was a michman in the Russian Navy