Around the Music Festival

Former Soviet composer Dmitri Smirnov died on April 9 at a London hospital. He was taken to hospital for acute respiratory illness due to the new coronavirus, but was not helped. He was 71. In 1991 he was in exile in the UK.

He was born in Minsk, the capital of the former Soviet Union of Belarus, to a family of opera singers. Graduated from Moscow Conservatory in 1972. At the Conservatory, he studied under Nikolai Sidelnikov, Yuri Kholopov, and Edison Denisov.

In 1976, “Solo for Harp” won the first prize at the Maastricht International Competition in the Netherlands and attracted attention.

However, in 1979 he was criticized by the general secretary and composer authority Tikhon Khrennikov（1913-2007） at the sixth meeting of the Alliance of Composers of the USSR by name along with the other six. Because the seven have participated without permission in the “Soviet Music Festival” in Cologne and Venice.

However, vigorous songwriting continued, and in 1989 the opera “Tiriel and Thel” were performed at the Freiburg Festival in Germany, and the first symphony “Four Seasons” was played at the Tanglewood Music Festival in the United States. He was one of the founders of the “Contemporary Music Society”, which was launched in Moscow in 1990.

The works were premiered one after another after another after exile. “Song of Liberty” premiered in Leeds in 1993, Cello Concerto in Manchester in 1996, and Cantata “Song of Songs” in 2001 in Geneva. In 2004, “Triple Concerto 2” was premiered by the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Center in London.

Photo：Tatiana Kantorovitch