FEB for Clarinet and String Quartet

This one movement composition was written shortly after the death of my beloved aunt and namesake Firsova Elena Borisovna. The music is based on the three notes F-E- Bb of her initials. Feb was also her nickname because she was a great admirer of music and art. The composition was first performed on 7th of February 2016 at the Museum Gunzenhauser in Chemnitz, Germany, by the Ensemble 01. 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.