Elena Firsova - Associate Composer

Elena Firsova's music has been performed throughout Europe and the USA. Her many commissions include works for the BBC, BBC Proms, Brodsky Quartet, Schubert Ensemble, EXPO 2000 (Hanover) and Ensemble Pyramide. She held the post of composer in residence at Bard College (USA), St John's College (Cambridge) and at Dartington (Devon) and has taught at Keele University and the Royal Northern College of Music (Manchester).

Elena Firsova studied at the Moscow Conservatory where her teachers were Alexander Purimov (composition), Yuri Kholopov (analysis) and Nikolai Rakov (orchestration). Whilst in Moscow she also established contact with Edison Denisov and Philip Herschkowitz, a pupil of Anton Webern.

"Firsova's [music] is a subtler art, with ten string quartets at its core, her music often hints at private thoughts, never fully articulated but peeping through the foliage of her score like a cat in bushes." Norman Lebrecht (Daily Telegraph)

"One of the things I most admire about Lena Firsova's music is its single minded character. There is not a bar in what she writes that does not ring immediately with her personal tone of voice...tender and sweetly lyrical." Gerard McBurney

Publishers of her music include Boosey & Hawkes, G. Schirmer, Schott and Sovetsky Kompozitor.