Grigori Frid

• Son of a literary journalist exiled to Siberia in 1927 and a pianist who was often on the run because of the civil war
• Frid experienced the Soviet Union from its beginnings to its end and lost many family members during Stalin’s dictatorship
• 1935 Beginning of first studies in Irkutsk and composition studies at the Moscow Conservatory with G. Litinskij and V. Schebalin
• the composer quickly finds an individual atonally based musical language that penetrates the soul
• from 1936 to 1939 and 1947 to 1961 teaching at the Moscow Conservatory and compositional work also for radio
• In 1965 Frid founded the Moscow “Music Club” and organized seminars and concerts there
• stylistically influenced by Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Berg, Frid writes energetic music that penetrates into the depths, but remains comprehensible and can also pass over into the cheerful
• serial and tonal techniques, leitmotif techniques, but also use of clusters
• often very emotional, elegiac mood pictures in a dark sound colouring
• Central works besides the piano, chamber and orchestral music are Frid’s worldwide performed mono opera The Diary of Anne Frank and the equally sensitive mono opera Letters of van Gogh

Grigori Frid's successful works include:
Phaedra for ensemble (1985)
Concerto for viola and chamber orchestra (1965)
String Quartets No. 3-5
The Diary of Anne Frank (1969/1999)
Letters of van Gogh (1965)

Looking Ahead: The Diary of Anne Frank at the Staatstheater Augsburg (Staged by Nora Bussenius) and new production directed by David Bösch at the Hamburg State Opera (25.11.2023)

The most important thing was not to change a word of Anne Frank's text, not to add anything, but to build up the dramaturgy through the montage of episodes. I was so eager to make this music that the evening I finished the first page of the libretto, I immediately wrote the notes for it. (Grigori Frid)