Having resigned himself to the fact that his return to St Petersburg would take longer than anticipated, Myaskovsky resolved to make the most of his time in Moscow. In late 1902 he began to study privately with Taneyev. By his own admission, he probably made ‘a rather strange impression’, because he was too shy to show the eminent composer any of the music that he was writing. As the lessons proved unproductive, Taneyev suggested that Myaskovsky transfer to his former student Reinhold Glière, with whom he started in January 1903. The twenty-seven-year-old Glière, who had graduated from the Moscow Conservatoire two years previously and been awarded the institution's coveted gold medal, already had a symphony and several substantial chamber works to his credit. Taneyev held him in high regard and regularly sent him private pupils: earlier that year, he had recommended him as a tutor for the precocious Sergey Prokofiev, with whom Glière spent the summer at the Prokofiev family's estate in Sontsovka (now Sontsivka, in Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast). Myaskovsky established a better rapport with his new teacher: within six months he had consolidated his knowledge of music theory sufficiently to tackle chorale harmonisations and advanced exercises in chromatic harmony. His rapid progress bolstered his self-confidence and lifted his spirits. He reported to his sister Vera that the tormenting doubts of the previous year had dissipated: