Dalla luce alla luce

Dalla Luce alla Luce (From light to light) is about ten-minute long one-movement composition, a kind of short chamber concerto for bayan (accordion) and string quintet (2 violins, 2 violas and cello). The work was written in 2015 for the Ex Novo Ensemble and a bayanist Germano Scurti whom it is dedicated. The premiere took place in 2015 at Teatro La Fenice in Venice. A daughter of the distinguished atomic physicist, Elena Olegovna Firsova was born in 1950 in Saint Petersburg. She began to compose her music at the age of eleven. She studied at the Moscow Conservatory between 1970 and 1975 with Alexander Pirumov and Yuri Kholopov. She established the contact of a crucial musical importance with Edison Denisov and Philip Herschkowitz. In 1972 she married a composer Dmitri N. Smirnov. They have two children, Philip and Alissa. Since 1991 Firsova and her family have been resident of England. She wrote near two hundred works in many different genres of music and had many performances around the world.