# Pancho Vladigeroff



## Georgieva (7 mo ago)

I would like to start with my favorite *"Bulgarian Rhapsody VARDAR"* and short info about Vladigeroff (13.03.1899 – 08.09.1978)

Maestro Pancho Vladigeroff - "Bulgarian Rhapsody VARDAR" (THE BALKAN ANTHEM) - YouTube 

Pancho Vladigerov belongs to the second generation of Bulgarian composers. He was among the founding members of the Bulgarian Contemporary Music Society (1933), which later became the Union of Bulgarian Composers. He marked the beginning of a number of genres in Bulgarian music. He also established the Bulgarian composition and pedagogical school, his students including the best Bulgarian composers of the next generation. The pianist Alexis Weissenberg was his student, too.
Vladigerov was born in Switzerland, but lived in Shumen. He played the piano and composed since early age. He was 10 when he started studying composition with Dobri Hristov in Sofia. After his father’s death in 1912, he moved to Berlin with his mother and his twin brother (the violinist Luben Vladigerov), where he enrolled at the Staatliche Akademische Hochschule for Musik and studied music theory and composition with Professor Paul Juon and the piano with H. Barth. In 1920 he graduated from the Academie der Konste having studied composition with Professor Gernsheim and Professor Georg Schumann. He won twice the Mendelssohn Prize of the Academy (in 1918 and 1920). He worked for Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin as a composer and pianist (1920-32) before returning to Sofia where he was appointed reader and then Professor (from 1940) of Piano, Chamber Music and Composition at the State Academy of Music, which after his death was named after himself. He composed a lot in a variety of genres. He is author of an opera; ballet; symphony music; five piano concertos; two violin concertos; chamber music; 38 transcriptions of instrumental pieces for instrument and piano; 50 folksong concert arrangements for voice and piano/orchestra; 20 songs for voice and piano; 10 choral songs with piano/orchestral; music to the theatre performances of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna, the National Theatre in Sofia, etc. The world got acquainted with Pancho Vladigerov’s work in the 1920s when his pieces were published by the Universal Edition Publishers in Vienna and were released on LP by the German recording company Deutsche Gramophon before being performed throughout Europe and the USA. As a pianist and composer he toured most of the European countries performing his own works. In 1969 he was awarded the Gottfried von Herder Prize. Now a national and international competition for pianists and violinists held in Shumen has his name. The Bulgarian recording company Balkanton released an edition of his stage and symphony music in four sets of seven LPs each. Several works of his such as the Bulgarian Rhapsody “Vardar” for instance are considered to be emblematic of the Bulgarian music.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I first discovered Vladigerov on a wonderful CD from CPO years back. His melodic gift and terrific way of using the orchestra is sensational. I play that disk frequently. Then last year out came the Capriccio re-releases of the Balkanton recordings. And while I've enjoyed them very much, it becomes clear that large scale structure was not his strong point. The symphonies just meander too long and are often over-scored, although there are many delightful episodes. The piano concertos are enjoyable enough, but no threat to the Tchaikovsky 1st or Rachmaninoff 2nd. His obscurity is not deserved and it would be great if some of the shorter works were made easily available to play. I had a concert "Music 'round the World" a couple of years ago and really wanted to program Vardar, but getting a score to peruse proved quite difficult. So Enescu got played.


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## Georgieva (7 mo ago)

Admittedly, Valdigeroff’s music is part of my cultural DNA, precisely his Piano Concerto N. 3

Link: 




This is performed by Georgii Cherkin - piano
Symphony orchestra of the Bulgarian National Radio
Conducted by Milen Nachev


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## ganio (Dec 25, 2015)

He is a composer on whom there is still a lot of work to be done. The quality of musicological studies dedicated to Vladigerov and his work is generally quite deplorable, due to a clear tendency of a majority of Bulgarian authors before and after 1989 to write hagiographies and endless praises rather than serious biographies and analyses. One already has to dig a lot to find good research contributions on Vladigerov. Even E. Pavlov's biography is riddled with errors.


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## Georgieva (7 mo ago)

ganio said:


> He is a composer on whom there is still a lot of work to be done. The quality of musicological studies dedicated to Vladigerov and his work is generally quite deplorable, due to a clear tendency of a majority of Bulgarian authors before and after 1989 to write hagiographies and endless praises rather than serious biographies and analyses. One already has to dig a lot to find good research contributions on Vladigerov. Even E. Pavlov's biography is riddled with errors.


Unfortunately, you are right.


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