Quoted for truth

I discovered the following in doing some Tchaikovsky research before this afternoon's concert. I had to nab it before sharp-eyed Wikipedians fix it.

From the entry on The Five, a group of Russian nationalist composers in the mid-19th century:

In May, 1867 the critic Vladimir Stasov wrote an article, Mr. Balakirev's Slavic Concert, on a concert given for visiting Slav delegations to the "All-Russian Ethnographical Exhibition" in Moscow. The four Russian composers whose works were played at the concert were Glinka, Dargomïzhsky, Balakirev, and Rimsky-Korsakov. [1] The article ended with the following statement:

We fly high, no lie; you know this... BALLIN!! God grant that our Slav guests may never forget today's concert; God grant that they may forever preserve the memory of how much poetry, feeling, talent, and intelligence are possessed by the small but already mighty handful of Russian musicians

Looks like there was a Furious Five long before Grandmaster Flash.