Vladimir Stasov

[2] He discovered a large number of Russia's greatest talents, inspired many of their works and fought their battles in numerous articles and letters to the press.

As such, he carried on a lifelong debate with Russian novelist and playwright Ivan Turgenev, who considered Stasov "our great all-Russian critic.

He also warmed to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky after hearing the composer play the finale of his Little Russian Symphony at a Christmas 1872 gathering at Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's home.

Otherwise, his overall verdict on Tchaikovsky's work was negative: "The Conservatoire, academic training, eclecticism and overworking of musical materials laid its dread, destructive hand on him.

Of his total output, a few works [Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, Francesca da Rimini, and the String Quartets 2 and 3] are first-rate and highly original; the remainder are mediocre or weak.

"[8] Nor was he consoling about Modest Mussorgsky, a composer who, as a member of "The Five," he had helped nurture but about whom, for all the public praise of his musical gifts, there was always a note of intellectual condescension.

He called Diaghilev "a decadent cheerleader" in print and Mir iskusstva "the courtyard of the lepers" (an image borrowed from Victor Hugo's novel Notre-Dame de Paris).