Amazon rating: 5 stars. Gripping contemporary chamber music release.

Love and loss are the Yin and Yang of life. You cannot experience one without the other. With every bit of love comes a tremendous fear of loss, and the grief and agony of loss are impossible without true love coming before them. The new album “Love and Loss” presents music by Russian-born British composers Dmitri Smirnov and Elena Firsova, a remarkable husband-and-wife couple who spent almost all their creative lives together. It is a poignant tribute to Smirnov, who tragically passed away at the beginning of the COVID pandemic.
Both Smirnov (1948-2020) and Firsova (b. 1950) were born in the former USSR. The couple met and fell in love while studying at the Moscow Conservatoire. The trouble came when their music was performed outside of the USSR without official permission, drawing the ire of the authorities. In 1979, they were both named among the infamous “Khrennikov’s Seven,” the seven composers whose music was denounced at the Sixth Congress of the Composers' Union by its chairman Tikhon Khrennikov who said that they “distorted the face of Soviet music.” After being blacklisted, Smirnov and Firsova struggled to have their music published and performed. They eventually moved to England in the early 1990s, joining a long and distinguished list of composers and performers who left Russia due to unbearable conditions for creative people, Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Horowitz, Heifetz, Rostropovich, Schnittke... The list goes on and on, and there is no end in sight.
All of the works in this album were written after the couple left Russia for the UK. It opens with Smirnov’s composition Abel, which was inspired by an 1826 William Blake’s drawing titled The Body of Abel Found by Adam and Eve. Smirnov had a lifelong interest in William Blake. Not only did he set many of Blake’s poems to music, but he also wrote Blake’s biography and translated most of his poems into Russian to much critical acclaim. The drawing is rather expressive and disturbing, showing tormented Cain running away from an open grave of Abel, witnessed by the brothers’ parents, Adam and Eve. Each character in the painting corresponds to one instrument (Abel, clarinet, Eve, violin, Adam, cello, Cain, piano). Smirnov’s music is a perfect match to the painting, mournful and neurotic, reaching an agonizing climax halfway through the piece and then quietly dying away, leaving the conflict unsettled.
The second piece, to be or not to be..., is based, of course, on the famous Hamlet monologue. It is scored for a standard piano quartet (violin, viola, cello, and piano) but, unusually, the main voice is given to the viola, with the rest of the ensemble playing supporting roles. The Shakespeare’s text is printed in the score but not recited, it is there to guide the performers through Hamlet’s soliloquy. The viola line follows the syllabic pattern of the monologue, and the audience can feel Hamlet’s probing thoughts and inner struggles.
Elena Firsova’s “Four Seasons” is very different from its Vivaldi’s namesake. The composer does not intend to imitate the sounds of nature or paint idyllic landscapes but aims to convey human emotions and moods. Firsova’s seasons are a reflection on British weather, so they are appropriately dreary and bleak, starting with harsh Winter and ending with a long and bleak Autumn. While not tonal, Firsova music here is highly emotional and expressive, creating mesmerizing soundscapes.
The final work of the album is Firsova’s Quartet for the Time of Grief, dedicated to the memory of her husband. In an interview one year after Dmitri Smirnov’s passing, Firsova confessed that writing music was her method of survival. The work has the same scoring as Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, and sometimes it evokes Messiaen’s sonorities, but the overall mood is gloomier. Episodes of plaintive sorrow are interrupted by bursts of anger, and the struggle to cope with the loss is palpable. While Messiaen’s work ends in ethereal calm, the Quartet for the Time of Grief does not reach catharsis, ending in unresolved sorrow.
All works receive world premiere recordings by Rudersdal Chamber Players, a Danish chamber ensemble founded in 2017. Their performances are flawless and totally idiomatic as the ensemble worked closely with both composers. It is hard to imagine that these works could be played any better, and the recorded sound is rich and detailed. The CD contains detailed liner notes about the music and all participating musicians. Overall, this is an excellent contemporary music release that deserves strong recommendation. Anton Angelo, July 14th 2025