Acclaimed Bulgarian violinist Micho Dimitrov was born in Plovdiv. He graduated the Plovdiv music school and later went on to study at the Conservatory in Sofia under Boyan Lechev and Vladimir Avramov. He is 1978 finalist of the International Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow and laureate of the Fritz Kreisler Competition in Vienna and has specialized with Prof. Ifrah Neaman at the Guildhall School of Music in London. Until 1988, he was concertmaster of the Plovdiv Philharmonic with conductor Dimitar Petkov.

For more than 25 years Micho Dimitrov has been living and working in Holland after winning the contest for concertmaster of the Hilversum Radio Symphony Orchestra. The renowned musician frequently returns to Bulgaria to organize masterclasses in Sofia, Plovdiv, Razlog, Varna. He lectures, plays chamber music and… paints “cathedrals of his music”; he has had seven solo exhibitions. In 2013 Micho Dimitrov received the Musician of the Year statuette of the Bulgarian National Radio’s Allegro Vivace contest.

“The years fly by,” says Maestro Micho Dimitrov. “On 20 May this year I stepped over into my 7th decade. I am a violinist but for the past four years I have also been a painter. My jubilee started out in a very special way – with an exhibition and a concert, dedicated to chamber music. Musicians from the Consonance foundation (the Intellectual Legacy of Pancho Vladigerov, founded in 2006) played for me at the Trakart gallery in Plovdiv – a wonderful place, full of Roman mosaics and history, where I performed several pieces. But the biggest event was, without doubt, my participation in the 52nd International Chamber Music Festival in Plovdiv, one of the oldest in Europe, where I performed with my partner, pianist Violeta Popova. At the museum of ethnography we performed a selection of works which I have played at different times in my life.”

Here is Micho Dimitrov with more about his musical career, his work with foremost musicians and his conquest of the most prestigious world stages:

“I met Ifrah Neaman at the Tchaikovsky competition of which I was a finalist in 1978. Several months later I won the special prize at the Kreisler Competition in Vienna and it was there that he offered me a British Council scholarship; I left in the spring of 1980. I spent three years there and in the last two months of my stay I got a call from legendary Bulgarian conductor Dobrin Petkov who asked me to take over as concertmaster of the Plovdiv Philharmonic. My wonderful colleague and friend Kevork Mardisoryan had actually received the same scholarship offer, so after me, he was the next musician to have studied with Prof. Neaman. Naturally, I accepted and we traded places. We practically never met as concertmasters in Plovdiv. He returned two years later but with the intention of going abroad, which he did. I stayed on with Elmira Darvarova until she too left for America (Elmira Darvarova is the first and only female concertmaster in the history of the Metropolitan Opera). People called the three of us “the three concertmaster stars”. I went to the Netherlands in 1988 where I won the contest for concertmaster of the biggest Dutch Radio Philharmonic and I spent 25 years in that capacity. I am still playing, but in recent years, I have been lecturing and holding masterclasses in Bulgaria more and more often.”

Micho Dimitrov about his painting, the style and origin of his cathedrals:

“We, performing artists are co-authors at best, but we are most of all interpreters. I cannot change a single note written by Mozart and I have to play exactly what he put down on paper 250 years ago. But I really felt like creating something by my own hand, so instead of music I turned to painting. Painting gives me freedom and is a way to improvise. I have always had a deep respect for architecture, most of all medieval and ancient, I also love ancient ruins. I have a whole cycle of drawings. I have had masterclasses in Bulgaria five times a year, but now I am hoping to organize a class I can work with continually. There are some wonderful young musicians and it is always a pleasure to listen to them play. After a period of utter decline, there now seems to be a renaissance – I hope that really is so because music is the way we give expression to our soul.”

Audio contains the following works:

- Tzigane (Gypsy) by Maurice Ravel, Brownziel Corey, piano;

- Song by Pancho Vladigerov, Brownziel Corey, piano;

- In the Style of Albeniz for violin and piano by Rodion Shchedrin, Brownziel Corey, piano;

- Solo violin in G minor by J. S. Bach.

English version: Milena Daynova

Photos: Vida Pironkova and private library