The music programme was prepared by Alexander Abadjiev who accompanied virtuoso violinist Vasco Abadjiev for 4 whole years at his concerts. He will tell interesting moments from the rich biography of his friend. Vasco and Alexander are not relatives, although they have the same surnames. Alexander was seventeen years-old and Vasco Abadjiev was twenty six when they first met.

“We met by accident”, Alexander Abadjiev recalls. “I studied composition in the classes of Pancho Vladigerov and piano in Andrey Stoyanov's classes. Mr Vladigerov was taking care of Vasco Abadjiev after Vasco's father and former Rector of the Bulgarian State ConservatoireProfessor Nikola Abadjiev had passed away. Apparently Vasco was unable to take care of himself, because he was suffering from a mental illness. I remember that I was quite surprised when Professor Vladigerov asked me to play glass balls with the virtuoso violinist. At that time he was already quite famous. The tickets for Vasco's concerts were selling like hot cakes and people used to wait on long queues for hours to get tickets for his concerts.  Back then, the former General Secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party Valko Chervenkov took Vasco under his wing. The number of his concerts went up and I was chosen to attend his rehearsals.He held concerts together with Pancho Vladigerov only. He played with Ruslan Raichev in the city of Plovdiv. I travelled with him across the country for four years and helped him during his concerts.”

I sacrificed a lot of my time, although I had to study myself. However, I was close to a great person and one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century, Alexander says. His music talent was acknowledged for the first time on January 14, 1932, when renowned Bulgarian scientists and musicians attended his first home concert, in order to show respect to his father. They did not want to leave their house, because they were astounded by Vasco's music talent. Later, I met with Jehudi Menuhin who knew that Vasco was already very popular worldwide and that music fans used to call him the 20th Century Paganini and the Second Menuhin.

Mr. Alexander Abadjiev also said that he saw in David Oistrakh's home photos of the memorable music contest Eugene Ysaye in Belgium held in 1937 when celebrated Russian violinist won the top prize and Vasco received an extraordinary award, because he was still a child. Queen Elizabeth is surrounded by the participants on one of the photos and Vasco Abadjiev was on David Oistrakh's shoulders on another photo.Then the talented Bulgarian child and his mother, who was a pianist and was accompanying him at his concerts, were invited by the British Queen and played for the political and cultural elite as well as for the royalties in Brussels. Vasco performed very successfully and the year after he won the top prize at the Fritz Kreisler contest in Liege. Alexander Abadjiev can talk about Vasco's life and music career for hours, because he was close to the genial violinist. The virtuoso violinist also played in a restaurant in Germany in front of a loyal and faithful audience. I hope that many fans of Vasco's music will attend the concert on Sunday, Alexander Abadjiev told Radio Bulgaria.

English version: Kostadin Atanasov

Audio contains the following mieces:

1  Caprice 24 by Niccolo Paganini

2  Johan Sebastian Bach partita №2, chaconne