FRID, GRIGORY (1915–2012)

Echo Klassik Awards prizewinner and artistic director of the Hamburg International Chamber Music Festival, Elisaveta Blumina belongs to a generation of musicians who put the music centre stage, and is steeped in the great Russian piano tradition of Heinrich Neuhaus. She has achieved international recognition with performances at New York’s Carnegie Hall, the Berliner Philharmonie, the Laeiszhalle and Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and the Auditorio Nacional de Música in Madrid, among others, and is frequently invited to appear at music festivals across Europe and the US. Blumina has appeared as a guest soloist with many orchestras including the Dresdner Philharmonie, Moscow Virtuosi and Sinfonia Varsovia with conductors such as Thomas Sanderling, Yuri Temirkanov and Vladimir Spivakov. She is one of the leading interpreters of 20th- and 21st-century music and is currently recording the complete piano works of Mieczysław Weinberg. She has released over 34 internationally acclaimed albums on labels such as cpo, Capriccio and Naxos.

Grigori (Grigory) Samuilovich Frid was a distinguished member of the generation of composers born in Russia just before the Revolution of 1917. Frid’s significant corpus of piano music can trace its lineage to Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky and Stravinsky, and his skill in conjuring entire worlds in music can be heard throughout this recording. His albums of Children’s Pieces are rich in gems that evoke poetic nostalgia, seasonal moods and witty pictorial descriptions that genuinely transcend their didactic purpose. In these world première recordings, distinguished pianist Elisaveta Blumina reveals Frid’s extraordinary character – a gifted composer, pedagogue and artist who lived his life to the full, despite many personal setbacks and difficulties.