Alissa Firsova Clarinet Concerto, “Freedom”

Alissa FirsovaBy Peter A. Klein

The Northwest Sinfonietta’s February program “Mozartiana” featured a world premiere—the Clarinet Concerto “Freedom,” by Alissa Firsova, written for Seattle Symphony clarinetist Laura DeLuca. The concert was heard Friday night, February 11 at Benaroya Recital Hall, with performances on Saturday and Sunday at Tacoma’s Rialto Theater and in Puyallup.

Firsova was born in Moscow in 1986. Her parents are the noted Russian composers Elena Firsova and Dmitri Smirnov. The family emigrated to England in 1991, where Alissa completed her musical education. She is both a composer and an accomplished pianist. A sampling of her music can be found on YouTube.

The concerto came about due to Firsova’s special relationship with the Seattle Chamber Players, of which DeLuca is the clarinetist. Firsova has written two pieces for SCP. She traveled to Seattle in 2006 for the premiere of the second piece, which celebrated the 100th anniversary of the birth of Shostakovich. As she puts it, “I completely fell in love with Seattle and realized what a magical city it is!”

On Firsova’s last day in Seattle, over dessert, DeLuca asked her, “Would you write me a clarinet concerto?” Firsova was happy to oblige, as she wanted create just such a work as part of an ongoing cycle called “Expressions.” Each piece in the cycle is formed around an emotion or idea that Firsova was concerned with at the time of composition.

In the case of the Clarinet Concerto, that idea is “freedom.” By coincidence, the piece received its premiere on the same day that freedom flowered in Egypt. But this is not a work that echoes the joyous shouts of newly-freed masses triumphing over jack-booted tyranny.

Instead, it is a restrained and lyrical reflection on the very idea of freedom, from Firsova’s own perspective. Her parents experienced the oppression that was the common fate of creative artists in the former Soviet Union. Knowledge of that oppression is part of Firsova’s consciousness. But she grew up free to write music as she wished, and that is the world she knows firsthand.

The soundscape that Firsova creates in her one-movement work is often reminiscent of Aaron Copland’s, though with more strongly-flavored sounds. The orchestra creates a tonal foundation, while the clarinet goes its own way. Listen carefully, and one hears that the clarinet is often playing in another key entirely. These different tonal centers of gravity pull in different directions, sometimes at once, sometimes in responsive dialog as the music develops. The celesta (played by Firsova) sounds a colorful outburst.

The piece climaxes in a cadenza for the clarinet with more virtuosic writing. A horn joins the cadenza in duet with the clarinet. Then the opening material returns in the orchestra, soon punctuated by bell-like repeated notes from the celesta. As Firsova noted in her opening remarks, the celesta is trying to pull the clarinet back into the orchestra’s tonality. But that doesn’t happen, and the piece ends with the clarinet still singing its own song, the tension between freedom and conformity unresolved.

“Freedom” is an attractive and engaging work which says what it has to say with much beauty and subtlety.