The Kiev Conservatory was founded in 1913 at the Kiev campus of the Music College of the Russian Musical Society. The organization of the conservatory was spearheaded by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Alexander Glazunov, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The first directors were V. Pukhalsky (1913) and Reinhold Glière (1914–1920). In 1925, the lower storeys were separated from the conservatory to form a musical college, while the older classes became the Mykola Lysenko Music and Drama Institute.