Firsova, Elena (1950– )

Russian composer. Her music is in a variety of instrumental forms, many of them small scale, and was first heard outside the USSR in Paris, France, and Venice, Italy, in 1979. She made her British debut in 1980 with Petraca's Sonnets (1976).

She studied at the Moscow Conservatory, and has learned from Edison Denisov. One of several composers who chose to live in the West after the collapse of communism, she became professor and composer-in-residence at Keele University, Lancashire, England, in 1993.

Works Opera Feast in Time of Plague (1972), The Nightingale and the Rose (1991).

Orchestral cello concerto (1973), two violin concertos (1976, 1983), Stanzas (1975), Autumn Music (1988) and Cassandra (1993) for orchestra.

Chamber four string quartets (1970, 1974, 1980 – in memoriam Igor Stravinsky – and 1989), Chamber Music (1973), four chamber concertos (1978, 1982, 1985, 1988), Spring Sonata for flute and piano (1982), piano sonata (1986), Music for 12 (1986) and Odyssey for ensemble (1990), The Night Demons for cello and piano (1993).

Vocal Petraca's Sonnets for voice and ensemble (1976) and settings of Pasternak, Mayakovsky, Mandelstam, and Shakespeare for voice and instruments; Silentium for mezzo and string quartet (1991), Distance for voice, clarinet, and string quartet (1992), concerto for violin and 13 strings (1993), Before the Thunderstorm for soprano and ten instruments (1995).