New Arts International

- Pianist Oliver Triendl and violinist Isabelle van Keulen present here the complete output for their instruments by an almost unknown Russian composer: Grigory Frid (1915-2012)
- The pieces encompass a composition period of time going from late 40s to early 70s and feature different styles which may recall Shostakovich to Schnittke.
- The atmospheres are also much diversified, but the music always conveys a great sense of depth and feeling, both musically and emotionally.

Oliver Triendl: My first encounter with the instrumental music of Grigory Samuilovich Frid (1915-2012) occurred around fifteen years ago. It was at this time that Hans-Ulrich Duffek, the former director of the Sikorski music publishing company, showed me the scores of some chamber-music and orchestral works by this almost entirely unknown composer. My enthusiasm for Frid’s music came to the attention of Stefan Lang – the editor at the culture-oriented German radio station Deutschlandfunk Kultur to whom the musical world owes many important discoveries – so that the two of us were able to set up plans also for the recording of certain of the works of this long-neglected composer.

Frid’s works for violin and piano allow us to trace the composer’s stylistic development over a period of some twenty-five years. Thus, whereas his earlier work is to be situated in the tradition of Shostakovich, his later compositions are stylistically much closer to the work of Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina and Alfred Schnittke. “Dark”, “autumnal”, “ruminative”, “sarcastic” – it is such notions as these that first occur to me as I listen to Frid’s music.

Isabelle van Keulen: In summer 2019, Oliver had managed to get together quite a few scores of Frid’s music for violin and piano and we organised a “read-through” session, in which we both were reduced to tears several times by the sheer strength and diversity of this incredible music…. Both the violin sonatas and pieces but also the viola pieces – that will be released in an upcoming disc - bear witness to a deeply sensitive, profoundly sad composer; music with sometimes unbearably long lines and huge tension, only to then lighten up again

The Complete Works for Violin and Piano