died in 1908, Prokofiev noted that he had only studied with him "after a fashion"—he was just one of many students in a heavily attended class—and regretted that he otherwise "never had the opportunity to study with him"). He also shared classes with the composers Boris Asafyev and Nikolai Myaskovsky, the latter becoming a close and lifelong friend. As a member of the Saint Petersburg music scene, Prokofiev developed a reputation as a musical rebel, while getting praise for his original compositions, which he performed himself on the piano. In 1909, he graduated from his class in composition with unimpressive marks. He continued at the Conservatory, studying piano under Anna Yesipova and continuing his conducting lessons under Tcherepnin. In 1910, Prokofiev's father died and Sergei's financial support ceased. Fortunately, he had started making a name for himself as a composer and pianist outside the Conservatory, making appearances at the St Petersburg Evenings of Contemporary Music. There he performed several of his more adventurous piano works, such as his highly chromatic and dissonant Etudes, Op. 2 (1909). His performance of it impressed the organisers of the Evenings sufficiently for them to invite Prokofiev to give the Russian premiere of Arnold Schoenberg's Drei Klavierstücke, Op. 11. Prokofiev's harmonic experimentation continued with Sarcasms for piano, Op. 17 (1912), which makes extensive use of polytonality. He composed his first two piano concertos around then, the latter of which caused a scandal at its premiere (23 August 1913, Pavlovsk). According to one account, the audience left the hall with exclamations of "'To hell with this futuristic music! The cats on the roof make better music!'", but the modernists were in rapture. In 1911, help arrived from renowned Russian musicologist and critic Alexander Ossovsky, who wrote a supportive letter to music publisher Boris P. Jurgenson (son of publishing-firm founder Peter Jurgenson [1836–1904]); thus a contract was offered to the composer. Prokofiev made his first foreign trip in 1913, travelling to Paris and London where he first encountered Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. First ballets In 1914, Prokofiev finished his career at the Conservatory by entering the 'battle of the pianos', a competition open to the five best piano students for which the prize was a Schroeder grand piano; Prokofiev won by performing his own Piano Concerto No. 1. Soon afterwards, he journeyed to London where he made contact with the impresario Sergei Diaghilev. Diaghilev commissioned Prokofiev's first