Russian émigrés Rachmaninov Smirnov Firsova Œuvres pour piano Firsova - VIVAT109

In December 1917, Sergei Rachmaninov had to flee Moscow in haste, never to return again. Some sixty years later, the composers Elena Firsova and Dmitri Smirnov found themselves blacklisted in Russia (alongside five other composers, including Sofia Gubaidulina); after a difficult decade, and just before the fall of the Soviet Union, they finally left Russia – doing so, like Rachmaninov, with just a couple of suitcases and their two young children in tow. Heading to Great Britain, and on arrival there moving lodgings no fewer than thirteen times, they finally settled in the UK. One of those youngsters was Alissa Firsova, who has since risen to become one of the UK’s brightest stars of the new composing generation. An equally talented pianist, on this, her début solo disc, she performs Rachmaninov’s rarely-heard original 1913 version of his Second Piano Sonata (several minutes longer, and containing many more notes, than the version more normally heard) and the Variations on a Theme of Corelli, together with music by her father (Dmitri Smirnov’s Blake Sonata), her mother (Elena Firsova’s For Alissa) and Alissa’s own Lune Rouge. The release of this disc coincides with Alissa Firsova’s new orchestral commission for the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, which will be given its world premiere under the baton of Andrew Litton at the BBC Proms on 27 August 2015.