The summer festival in the town of Pliska, organized by the PliskArt foundation got underway with a programme by soloists from the Varna Opera. Antoaneta Marinova,Vyara Zhelezova, IlkoZahariev, and Janeta Benun – piano - played excerpts of popular operas, operettas, musicals, as well as Russian romances.

“All programmes were compiled by the performers specifically for our forum,” says Venetsiela Naidenova, founder of the PliskArt foundation and artistic director of the festival. She has been living in Switzerland for years where she teaches piano and organizes various music events. The first music festival in Pliska – the first capital of the First Bulgarian Kingdom and the place where Venetsiela built a superb concert hall – was held in the autumn of 2015.

“It is a small chamber music concert hall and it is administered by the PliskArt foundation which has gradually started organizing different events. This summer festival is one such event. Margarita Spassova, whose concert took place on Saturday is a really interesting musician and artiste. She plays a baroque violin, electric viola and uses loop-station and beatbox. She sings in German, English and Bulgarian. I think this is her first concert in this country. The purpose of our foundation is to do something for the cultural life in Pliska. It is not just a town whose name has gone down in the history of Bulgaria. All of us working for PliskArt love the town, it brings back our childhood memories. We have a building where we organize these events. It is well worth the effort, even if it is just to help people from this small town come in contact with classical music and learn to love it. We are hoping that the property will be completed by next summer so we can hold summer classes for young musicians – they will be given a wonderful opportunity to play, sing and be creative. That is the idea – to transform this place into an art residence, into a hub of culture and music. To my mind it is all about love of art, the friendship that brings together the people who share this love. It may sound naïve but it seems to me that every person should be doing what they love most, that would make the world a better place.”

Margarita Spassova performs her own original works for viola and at every concert, records fragments which she then blends with other sounds – instruments and voice. This means that a specific moment in time, her own emotions and the emotions of the audience at that moment, are etched onto the work itself.

Margarita Spassova was born in Sofia to a family of musicians. Her father is a composer and her mother an academic. She started playing the violin when she was only four. Margarita Spassova has graduated the Lyubomir Pipkov National Music School in Sofia. The family moved to Germany in 1990 where Margarita continued her education in Bochum and Essen. She graduated the instrumental department of the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen in the violin classes of Prof. Pieter Daniel and Prof. Yatsek Klimkewicz. She then went on to specialize baroque violin for two years at the Cologne Academy of Music with Prof. Richard Gwilt. She has had concerts in Germany and across Europe and has played with an array of baroque orchestras. As of 2013 Margarita Spassova has been composing music and experimenting with different instruments (violin, viola, guitar, oboe) in borderline areas between classical music, jazz, pop and world music, using loop-station and beatbox. Her versatile talent, as well as the blend of different styles and sound is what makes her music truly unique.

The audio features:

-  Aria of Zerlina from the opera Don Giovanni by Mozart, performed by Vyara Zhelezova, mezzosoprano with the Symphony Orchestra of the Bulgarian National Radio, conductor Grigor Palikarov;

-  Now, performed by Margarita Spassova;

-  Patchwork, performed by Margarita Spassova.

English version: Milena Daynova