Another meeting place of Balakirev's circle was at the house of Lioudmilla Ivanovna Shestakov, Glinka's married sister. Here, besides the composers, came several excellent singers, mostly amateurs, including the sisters Karmalina and Mme. S. I. Zotov, for whom Rimsky-Korsakov wrote several of his early songs. Among those who sympathised with the aims of the nationalists were the Pourgold family, consisting of a mother and three daughters, two of whom were highly accomplished musicians. Alexandra Nicholaevna had a fine mezzo-soprano voice with high notes. She sang the songs of Cui, Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov with wonderful sympathy and insight, and "created" most of the female parts in the operas of "the mighty band" in the days when they had to be satisfied with drawing-room performances of their works. But her strong point was the interpretation of Moussorgsky's songs, which was a revelation of the composer's depth of feeling and close observation of real life and natural declamation. I had the privilege of visiting this gifted woman in later years when she was Mme. Molas,[33] and I can never forget the impression made upon me by her rendering of Moussorgsky's songs, "The Orphan," "Mushrooming," "Yeremoushka's Cradle Song," and more especially of the realistic pictures of child-life entitled "The Nursery." Her sister Nadejda Nicholaevna, who became Mme. Rimsky-Korsakov, was a pupil of Herke and Zaremba, Tchaikovsky's first master for theory. An excellent pianist and sight-reader, a musician to her finger-tips, she was always available as an accompanist when any new work by a member of the brotherhood needed a trial performance. She was also a skilful arranger of orchestral and operatic works for pianoforte.[34] The Pourgolds were devoted friends of Dargomijsky, and during the autumn of 1868 the entire circle met almost daily at his house, to which he was more or less confined by his rapidly failing health.