His monodrama The Diary of Anne Frank (1968) put Grigori Frid on the musical map, beyond the borders of Soviet Russia. Frid was born in...

His monodrama The Diary of Anne Frank (1968) put Grigori Frid on the musical map, beyond the borders of Soviet Russia. Frid was born in the Petrograd (St. Petersburg) of 1915 and had to witness early on how his family fell victim to the seemingly indiscriminate (and in fact deliberately arbitrary) rounds of suppression, arrest, and deportation of the Stalin Regime. His music stands in the aesthetic realm of Dmitri Shostakovich on the one hand, and that of his younger contemporaries Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Alfred Schnittke on the other. His works finds itself influenced by the great Russian tradition but yearning to find new, modern ways – more in line with international trends in music – of expressing itself.

REVIEW:

Grigori Frid (not to be confused with the Hungarian composer Géza Frid (1904-1989) had Jewish roots and could have lost his life when young, as his family were persecuted and murdered under Stalin and again during World War 2, having been conscripted into the Soviet Army as a paramedic. Later he returned to his job at the Moscow Conservatory and lived to a great age.

The Piano Quintet Op 72 is formally very interesting and unusual. Ostensibly in three movements (allotted three tracks), it actually divides into several sections dictated by tempi. The overall feeling of this work could perhaps leave you thinking of Shostakovich in one of his more solemn moods, I also thought occasionally of Edison Denisov’s (d.1996) Piano Trio and of Elena Firsova, but on this, my first acquaintance with Frid, I can also recognise a mature and individual voice.

Phädra, composed four years later, although another piano quintet, is marked deliberately as for viola (first) with two violins, cello and piano. The sombre first movement has, right from the start, a tolling bell high in the piano and its title, Phädra, perhaps acts as a description of how the composer wanted to present her character. Surprisingly, the second movement uses the ‘Serenade’ melody found in Stravinsky’s ‘Pulcinella’, linking us via Pergolesi back to Racine’s time. Frid, however, develops the movement into a very intense central section in which the melody is again enveloped in the tolling bell and highly dissonant, fortissimo writing in the upper strings. It returns as if unmoved to its original innocence. Movement three is oppressively and freely chromatic. The final movement summarises the sombre mood of much of the music and recaps, it seems, some of the first movement.

These two works are superbly played with a deep understanding and a high-quality musicianship, demonstrating fully the needs of the music. They represent some of the high peaks of Frid’s output and open a door onto a composer who is now awaiting discovery.

-- MusicWeb International