Glazunov completed the F minor Piano Concerto in 1911, at the height of his authority as director of the St Petersburg Conservatory, an administrative post that consumed the years in which his composing slowed. The work has two movements only: a broad sonata-form first movement and a set of variations that ends as a finale, a plan closer to Franck than to the Russian virtuoso concerto tradition. The piano writing is dense and orchestral rather than display-driven, which is one reason the concerto has stayed on the edge of the repertoire.