Mikhail Pavlovich Azanchevsky

Mikhail Pavlovich Azanchevsky (Moscow, 1839 – Moscow, 1881) was a Russian composer and scholar, whose significance rests chiefly on his administration of the St Petersburg Conservatory in the 1870s.

After leaving the civil administration in 1858, he moved to Leipzig, where he studied music theory with Richter and Hauptmann, and afterwards received lessons from Liszt in Rome. In Paris he apparently acquired a substantial music collection that had belonged to G. E. Anders; however, some sources place that purchase in 1886, the year after his death, so the detail is doubtful.

On his return to Russia, he was appointed honorary librarian of the conservatory in 1870 and, the following year, took over its directorship. Unlike his predecessor Zaremba, he was favourable to the New Russian School, and one of his first decisions was to engage Rimsky-Korsakov as professor of practical composition and orchestration. Ill health forced him to resign in 1876.

His legacy is bound up with that decision, which had a marked influence on Russian composition, as well as with the library he donated to the conservatory. His works, pleasant in tone rather than profound, include chamber music, piano pieces and songs.