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Alissa Firsova

Russian-British musician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ4727244
Source-derived summary

Alissa Firsova (Russian: Алиса Фирсова; born 24 July 1986) is a Russian-British classical composer, pianist and conductor.

Biography

Born in Moscow to the composers Elena Firsova and Dmitri Smirnov, she moved to the UK in 1991.

In 2001 she won the BBC/Guardian/Proms Young Composer Competition with her piano piece "Les Pavots".

She graduated from Purcell School as a composer and pianist in 2004, and Royal Academy of Music as a pianist in 2009, where she also developed her conducting studies with Paul Brough.

In 2009 she entered the Conducting Postgraduate Course in Royal Academy of Music under the tuition of Colin Metters.

Her piano teachers included Tatiana Kantorovich, Valéria Szervánszky, James Gibb, Simon Mulligan, Hamish Milne, Ian Fountain, and Stephen Kovacevich. Among her composition teachers were Jeoffrey Sharkey, Richard Dubugnon, Jonathan Cole and Simon Speare. She also participated in workshops and master classes with composers Nicholas Maw, Simon Holt, Anthony Gilbert, David Bedford, David Matthews, and Mark-Anthony Turnage.

She had her Wigmore Hall debut in May 2009, followed by a Royal Albert Hall debut playing Stravinsky's Les Noces in the Proms festival in August. Her "Bach Allegro", commissioned by BBC Proms, was premiered in Royal Albert Hall in August 2010 by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Andrew Litton.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Alissa Firsova” is russian-British musician. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Alissa, Firsova and Russian-British, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1986, 1991, 2001, 2004—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1986-07-24. For this dossier, Alissa, Firsova and Russian-British is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “russian-British musician” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4727244. VIAF identifies the subject as 7765149108421668780008. The Library of Congress control number is no2005109080. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1986, 1991, 2001 and 2004.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Alissa Firsova”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Alissa Firsova primary sources, Alissa Firsova archive and Alissa research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Alissa Firsova”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Alissa Firsova” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.