FRID: The Diary of Anne Frank (Brilliant Opera Collection) [CD de audio] Eva Ben-Tsvi, A Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra, Frid and A.

The Russian composer Grigori Frid (1915-2012) comes from a Jewish intellectual family that was already in the crosshairs of the Stalinist squads in the late 1920s. Despite the repression, Frid was able to study music first in Irkutsk and then in Moscow and teaching music theory at the Moscow Conservatory between 1936 and 1939. After his service at the front during the war, he returned to the Conservatory in 1947 and worked on the side as a composer for radio. In 1965 he took over the leadership of the Moscow Youth Music Club, which often presented unofficial works by Sofia Gubaidulina, Edison Denissov and Alfred Schnittke. Frid's best-known work, the opera The Diary of Anne Frank in two acts for soprano and chamber orchestra, was premiered in 1969. In it, Frid set scenes from the diary to music with a drastic and lamenting tonal language that impressively evokes the fear, hope, anger and resignation of young Anne Frank in her isolation. This recording by the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra under the direction of Andrey Chistiakov with soprano Eva Ben-Zvi in the original Russian language was made in 1991 and was out of print for many years. Now reissued in the Brilliant Opera collection.