The Paths (Tropy): Album for Voice and Piano. Texts and English translations by D. Smirnov-Sadovsky (Meladina Music series)

This album for (middle/high) voice and piano includes vocal cycles "Tropy" ("The Paths", 2017) by Elena Firsova and " and "The Silly Moon" (8 Haiku, 2014) as well as a vocal composition "The Motive" (2012) by Dmitri N. Smirnov. All Russian texts are written and traslated into English by D. Smirnov-Sadovsky.

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, who is also known as a poet and translator (pen name D. Smirnov-Sadovsky). He was born in 1948 in Minsk into a family of opera singers Nikolay Senkin-Sadovsky and Eugenia Smirnova. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory 1967-1972 under Nikolay Sidelnikov, Yuri Kholopov and Edison Denisov. He also studied privately with Philip Herschkowitz, a pupil of both Berg and Webern. Since 1991 Firsova and Smirnov have been resident of England. Their music is available from the Boosey & Hawkes, Hans Sikorski, G. Schirmer and Meladina Press.