The Sofia Soloists Chamber Orchestra is an emblematic formation in this country’s cultural life. It was established 50 years ago by members of the orchestra of People’s Opera. The formation got quickly its individual image, as the 13th instrumentalists decided to play standing up yet at their first public performance in March 1962, thus winning the hearts of the audience.
It was a strong and inspiring start. The orchestra cooperated in a very intensive manner over the first 16 years with conductor and composer Vassil Kazandzhiev. They traveled a lot around the globe. The next conductor’s name was Emil Tabakov, while Plamen Dzhurov took over in 1988 and has stood in front of the orchestra ever since. The soloists present not only themselves through their concerts, but Bulgaria too. They had a concert recently at Studio No 1 of the Bulgarian National Radio /BNR/ that marked their 50th anniversary. Four vets attended the event too – those were the living history of Sofia Soloists. Conductor Prof. Plamen Dzhurov gives us details on the event:
“The atmosphere was really nice and the audience’s reactions were spontaneous and true. The program was a various one, with many soloists from the formation itself and two of our friends that we had often cooperated with. The whole event had a bright feeling.”
The Sofia Soloists have visited all continents throughout their history of 50 years. There were many performances in Japan, while Plamen Dzhurov was the conductor. There have been over 3,000 concerts in this country and abroad, with dozens of records and CDs, the formation has taken part in many TV shows and the BNR archives have preserved over 500 recordings. Plamen Dzhurov reminds those composers that dedicated their works to the orchestra.
“Liubomir Pipkov for instance, and his Forth Symphony. Then Lazar Nikolov – a String Concert; the last orchestration of Aleksander Raichev on Dimitar Nenov’s Miniatures. Marin Goleminov has also dedicated works for string orchestra to Sofia Soloists. There are works of younger authors too – Vassil Kazandzhiev, Aleksandar Kandov… Foreign composers from more than 30 countries have also written for us and still continue to do that. We have a composition contest with three editions. Nearly 140 works have been created for the ensemble and each autumn we perform 4 of those in front of the audience. These authors come from over 30 countries.”
Hundreds of foreign conductors and soloists work together with this Bulgarian chamber ensemble – Henryk Szeryng, Daniil Shafran, Nigel Kennedy among them… Best Bulgarian musicians from different generations play with Sofia Soloists. One of them is world famous violinist Mincho Minchev – listen next to his performance of a fragment from Bach’s Violin Concerto in E major.
The Sofia Soloists Chamber Orchestra will have other performances due to its 50th anniversary in 2012.
“We will have a series of concerts. Some of them will take place at the Bulgaria Hall, with our friends as guest musicians - Mincho Minchev, Lia Petrova… There will be premieres too. We will visit Germany on this occasion and 5 concerts will be held there. We will play in Algeria and Spain too. We had to travel to Japan this year, but the tour was postponed due to the earthquake. It will take place in a year.”
English version: Zhivko Stanchev
