Written when the composer was only eighteen, Alexander Glazunov's single-movement Serenade No. 1 (1883) is scored for a medium-sized orchestra. The work benefits from Glazunov's previous experience in writing the Symphony No. 1 (1881 - 82), at the same time foreshadowing the brilliant instrumental sense of the dozens of orchestra works that followed. Premiered under Mily Balakirev's baton in 1885, the five-minute Serenade shows signs of the oriental influences that came to typify much of the composer's orchestral music. A hauntingly plaintive oboe theme is one of the work's more memorable elements.

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