Festival Overview
Sofia Music Weeks Festival celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2019, a half century that saw massive change in Bulgaria’s capital. It presents two concerts on most days for five weeks, starting in late May. The performers are mostly home grown though there a few foreign guests. However the repertoire ranges widely from the baroque to the contemporary and standards are high.
Director: Momchil Georgiev
Sunday 30 June 2019
Bulgaria Hall
Sofia Soloists Chamber Orchestra
Nikolai and Mintcho Mintchev Violin
Miroslav Dimov Percussion
Plamen Djouroff Conductor
Michail Goleminov Four Pieces
Emil Tabakov Concerto for marimba, vibraphone, tapan and orchestra
Tippett Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli
Giya Kancheli A Little Daneliade for violin, piano, strings and percussions
The Review
Anniversaries were plentiful on this final evening of Sofia Music Weeks – the city’s 140th as Bulgaria’s capital, for example – and among them was conductor Plamen Djouroff’s own 70th.
He led the Sofia Soloists, established for only a decade or so less, in a programme that covered most of the post-WW II period, seen from the point of view of a group of senior composers.
It was a shame that the one truly new piece was also the least engaging. Goleminov (born 1956) produced Four Pieces for chamber orchestra that were not much more inspiring than their title; competent, intelligently constructed and firmly in the mainstream. On this hearing – and this was the first time I had come across his music – Goleminov seems to be one of those composers hard to find fault with but equally hard to enthuse about.
Tabakov, a little older (b. 1947) is far more adventurous, though he cannot resist adding yet another section to movements that already feel quite long enough. Nonetheless the energy generated by Miroslav Dimov as he ranged around the stage between vibraphone, marimba and the sturdy Bulgarian drum (the tapan) was mesmerising. Tabakov’s music explored the relationship between the percussion and the other orchetral instrument groups with real subtlety and ingenuity.
It was something of a relief, though, to relax into the familiar recesses of Tippett’s Corelli Fantasia, written three years before Goleminov was born but sounding if anything more modern. Hearing it in a context a long way from the English-speaking world takes Tippett’s music out of the usual comparisons greatly to his advantage. He has been rather forgotten this century and it is time to think again. He relished complixity and in our neo-baroque age where complexity, either political or artistic, is frowned upon it is good to be remind that not everything in life or art is simple.
Giya Kancheli (b. 1935) has, I suspect, much the same sardonic sense of humour that Michael Tippett had. I have no idea what a Daneliade is (nobody else that I can find has used the title) but this ‘little’ one from 2000 balances neatly on the fence between solemnity and comedy. When orchestra members use their voices – in this case grunts, shouts and cheers – the effect is always comic, even if done with straight faces. Kancheli drew on his film music for this piece but it stands alone well in the concert hall and the Sofia Soloists, not an ensemble one could ever accuse of being frivolous, carried it off with cheerful aplomb.