May 8 is the date for the concert of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with concertmaster Vesselin Panteleev-Eschkenazy, who is also the man behind this event. At Hall No.1 of the National Palace of Culture in Sofia audiences will be able to hear performances by the orchestra’s chamber formation. Here is more from Vesselin Panteleev-Eschkenazy himself:

“The concert on 8 May is something we, the musicians from the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra, Amsterdam have been looking forward to for a long time. We are coming to Sofia to offer the audience a beautiful prorgamme of hand-picked classical works. This has always been a dream of mine – to bring to Sofia my colleagues and friends from the orchestra I have been working with for many years. And not just to show them where I was born, but to bring them in contact with the wonderful Bulgarian  audience. The programme we are offering is most diverse. We have included works by Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky… I shall be performing Concerto for Two Violins by Bach, together with young Bulgarian violinist Viliana Bobeva, a student at the Essen Conservatoire in Germany. All musicians from the orchestra are very happy to be able to present this young talent to the audience in Bulgaria. Soloist is Dominic Seldis from Great Britain. He is a colleague and a friend, a double bass virtuoso and also – a TV personality in the UK and in Holland, where he presents a “classical reality show”. The audiences love him. Together, we play a duet by Botezini which is extremely difficult for both instruments. The programme is very broad ranging and we are hoping to have fun together with the audience at the National Palace of Culture on 8 May.”

Born to a family of Bulgarian musicians, Vesselin Panteleev-Eschkenazy graduated the Lyubomir Pipkov National Music School and then the Pancho Vladigerov National Music Academy. He then went on to study at the Guildhall in London with Prof. Ifrah Neeman. Since then he has been touring Europe, USA, South America, Asia.

“I have been concertmaster of the Concertgebouw Orchestra for 15 years,” Vesselin Panteleev-Eschkenazy goes on to say. “I came to occupy this post in 2000 after a rather difficult competition that lasted several months. I ended up living in the Netherlands by pure chance – I went there after I graduated in the UK. And I realized that my dream of working with this prestigious orchestra would take a lot of work. I am happy that now I will be able to share the music we perform with the audience in Bulgaria. Besides concertmaster and soloist at the Concertgebouw Orchestra, I have been performing with different programmes and different orchestras – piano duos, quartets, a piano quintet etc. We are still performing together with our amazing pianist Lyudmil Angelov, it is a such a pleasure to be working with him. We are to have a concert together in Madrid soon – a real treat for us because it is exactly 20 years ago in May that we gave our first concert together. Back then it was in Toledo in Spain, at the International Music Festival which Lyudmil organizes there. Now we are to play at the famed Auditorio hall in Madrid and we are really looking forward to it.”

English version: Milena Daynova

Audio file contains the following works:

-  Concerto for Violin and Orchestra by Khachaturian, part 3, fragment, performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, soloist Vesselin Panteleev-Eschkenazy;

-  An American in Paris by George Gershwin, performed by Vesselin Panteleev-Eschkenazy and Lyudmil Angelov, piano;

-  Humoresque by Rodion Shchedrin, performed by Vesselin Panteleev-Eschkenazy and Lyudmil Angelov;

-  Libertango, performed by Vesselin Panteleev-Eschkenazy and Adriana Nikolova.