Mily Balakirev

The Russian composer Mily Balakirev is currently primarily known as the leader of The Mighty Handful, a group of five Russian composers devoted to nationalistic music. He was the only member of the group who had received a decent musical education and imparted his musical beliefs to the others, which resulted in several works that established the reputations of both the group and the individual composers.
Balakirev himself was influenced by Mikhail Glinka, whose style he developed and fused with Romantic compositional techniques. His oeuvre consists mainly of collections of folk songs and piano works, but also contains symphonies, overtures and symphonic poems. Through his leadership and he works, he became an important figure in Russian music history that helped to set the course for songs and orchestral music.
Balakirev often worked on his compositions for years, which deprived him of the credit for their musical inventiveness, which was instead attributed to Rimsky-Korsakov or Borodin, who appropriated his ideas. Another consequence of the protracted composition of his works was that they were less successful than they could have been if they had been completed earlier, since they were not that refreshing anymore when they were introduced much later.