After musical training at the Moscow Conservatory, Ippolitov-Ivanov was appointed director of the Tbilisi Conservatory in Georgia. In 1905 he returned to Moscow to teach at the conservatory, where he worked until his death in 1935. He served as a conductor and continued the nationalist traditions established by the Five, with the firmer technical basis now provided by the conservatory. He shared with Rimsky-Korsakov and Balakirev an interest in the relatively exotic, enhanced through his experience of musical life in Georgia.

Orchestral Music

Caucasian Sketches, written in 1894, followed by the Armenian Rhapsody and Iveriya, are evidence of Ippolitov-Ivanov’s interest in the music of the various ethnic groups that formed part of the Russian Empire, of which further examples are found in his On the Steppes of Turkmenistan and Musical Pictures of Uzbekistan.