Tchaikovsky. The premiere, however, was a disaster; Rachmaninoff listened to the cacophonous performance backstage to avoid getting humiliated by the audience and eventually left the hall when the piece finished. The symphony was brutally panned by critics, and apart from issues with the piece, the poor performance of the possibly drunk conductor, Alexander Glazunov, was also to blame. César Cui wrote: If there were a conservatoire in Hell, if one of its talented students were instructed to write a programme symphony on "The Seven Plagues of Egypt", and if he were to compose a symphony like Mr Rachmaninoff's, then he would have fulfilled his task brilliantly and delighted the inmates of Hell. Rachmaninoff initially remained aloof to the failure of his symphony, but upon reflection, suffered a psychological breakdown that stopped his compositional output for three years. He adopted a lifestyle of heavy drinking to forget about his problems. Depression consumed him, and although he rarely composed, he still engaged in performance, accepting a conducting position by the Russian entrepreneur Savva Mamontov at the Moscow Private Russian Opera from 1897 to 1898. It provided income for the cash-strapped Rachmaninoff; he eventually left as it didn't allow time for other activities and due to the incompetence of the theater, which turned piano lessons into his main source of income. At the end of 1898, Rachmaninoff was invited to perform in London in April 1899, where he was expected to play his Second Piano Concerto. However, he wrote to the London Philharmonic Society that he couldn't finish a second concerto due to illness. The society then requested he play his First Piano Concerto, but he declined, dismissing it as a student piece. Instead, he offered to conduct one of his orchestral pieces, to which the society agreed, provided he also performed at the piano. He made a successful conducting debut, performing The Rock and playing piano pieces such as his hackneyed Prelude in C-sharp minor. The society secretary Francesco Berger invited him to return next year with a performance of the First Concerto. However, he promised to return with a newer and better one, although he did not perform it there until 1908. Alexander Goldenweiser, a peer from the same conservatory, wanted to play his new concerto at a Belyayev concert in Saint Petersburg, thinking its consummation was inevitable. Rachmaninoff, who had thoughts of composing it three years earlier, sent a letter