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GRIGORI FRID (1915-2012)
ISABELLE VAN KEULEN · OLIVER TRIENDL · GEORGISCHES KAMMERORCHESTER INGOLSTADT RUBEN GAZARIAN
With his opera The Diary of Anne Frank(1968/69), by virtue of the subject alone Grigory Frid could be sure of attracting attention beyond the borders of Russia. The remaining enormous oeuvre by the composer, covering mainly instrumental works, songs, radio and film music, still remains to be discovered and treated in depth. Both prior to and after the collapse of the Communist USSR, Frid was awarded the highest honours, e.g. the title of Artist of Merit (1986) and the Moscow Prize (1996). If it is probably not erroneous to view Frid’s aesthetic position in a propinquity to Dmitri Shostakovich, on the one hand, and in the environment of his contemporaries a generation younger such as Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina and Alfred Schnittke. As in the cases of these composers, Frid’s music is also positioned in a field of tension between following the great Russian tradition and the quest for possibilities of expression in keeping with new, modern and international trends.
