In the autumn of 1885, the twelve-year-old Rachmaninoff entered the home of Nikolai Zverev to receive private piano instruction and at the end of May 1886, Zverev took his students to Crimea, where Rachmaninoff continued his studies, hoping to gain entrance to Anton Arensky's harmony class at the Moscow Conservatory. It was during this time that Rachmaninoff created his first composition, a two-page Étude in F-sharp major (the manuscript is now lost). After admission to the class, he produced more exercises, the earliest of which is a Lento in D minor; it is the only surviving piece of ten he is said to have composed.
