Should you be looking for piano music with the flavour of Liszt and Rachmaninov that paints cinematic pictures, is folksy and romantic, that thunders, glitters and charms, and often requires fearless virtuosity from the pianist, then this eighty-minute release from Hyperion should fit the bill: step forward Bulgarian composer Pancho Vladigerov (1899-1978). His Exotic Preludes (very descriptive) and Impressions, sixteen numbers in all, are included here, the latter set reminding of Billy Mayerl’s insouciant miniatures.
If there is a drawback, it is listening to the whole at one sitting means that an element of sameness creeps in. Nevertheless, Nadejda Vlaeva is a devoted, stylish and flamboyant champion of her countryman’s music and is superbly recorded by Ben Connellan.
https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA68327http://www.nadejdavlaeva.com/
So pleased that Pancho Vladigerov’s music is appearing outside of Bulgaria. He was an excellent composer, very much in the mainstream of what one might call the European 20th-century folk-tonal tradition (hope you get what I mean) – a mixture perhaps of Bartok, Prokofiev and 1920s-30s Vaughan Williams. A measure of Vladigerov’s qualities is that when Karajan graduated in Salzburg, for his graduation concert he chose Vladigerov to be the soloist in his own (Vladigerov’s) Second Piano Concerto.
If Karajan at the age of 22 thought Pancho’s music was worth performing in his conducting graduation concert, we should take time out to investigate his output – much was recorded on Balkanton on LPs and issued in four or five boxes, but I don’t think much has been transferred to CD post-perestroika; one of his sons was a very fine conductor, whom I knew; he revered his father’s musicianship. Pancho’s music certainly deserves investigation and Hyperion are much to be applauded.