Elena Firsova (21/03/1950), a female Russian composer. The Leningrad-born, Moscow-trained composer, emerged in the 1970s as one of the most distinctive and imaginative Russian voices of her generation. Her music reflects the influence of her mentor Denisov but transforms his expansive lyricism into something more personal, private and romantic. She often sets the intimate and confessional poetry of Mandelstam, one of the greatest modern Russian poets, who died in the Stalinist camps in 1938. Her orchestral works and concertos incline to delicate chamber-music textures and singing melodic lines. Since the early 1990s, Firsova and her composer husband Dmitri Smirnov have lived in the UK.