The new album from Maya Fridman is a special arrangement by the cellist of Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel.
"The idea of this work came to me in December 2014. A few months before that, I started to play with Artem Belogurov. His genius and charisma prompted me look for a piece which could develop into an exciting and mystic adventure. I knew what I wanted to find: the depth embracing the light and the dark, a story that could transcend time and language, music itself. Going back to December I was sharing my ideas with my mother, when she spontaneously suggested to arrange Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel. The prospective of working on this piece thrilled me and at the same time seemed impossible.
While working on the first movement, it still felt as an impossible task. Like watching life forming in smoke with its own laws and rules to which I had to obey. I felt prisoned in Renata's delirium and lacked clarity. Just as her idea of an Angel was crystallizing in her mind, the music became tangible by itself. It triggered me and I could not stop working until the chapters were finished. Often, I had the impression that as in Renata's case, the radiant image of the Angel was fleeting from my hands. Just like her story this music is a paradox, the essence of which is the union of ecstasy and suffering. Her burning was an act of symbolic death in which she united with the Angel, through the ecstatic destruction of self. This music requires dissolution to exist and faith to surrender. It is the celebration of the Symbolists idea that the material reality is nothing but a distorted echo of another realm." Maya Fridman
