site.btaSofia Philharmonic Concert for Conductor Dobrin Petkov's Birth Centenary

Sofia Philharmonic will mark the birth centenary of major Bulgarian conductor Dobrin Petkov (1923-1987) with a concert at Bulgaria Hall on June 11, the philharmonic said.

The programme, with soloist violinist Mincho Minchev, includes Antonin Dvorak's Romance for Violin and Orchestra No.2 in F minor, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Russian Dance for Violin and Orchestra, Paul Hindemith's Ite, angeli veloces, Niccolo Paganini's “Andante” from Violin Concert No. 5, and Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No.1 in C major.

The concert will be conducted by Nayden Todorov, who explicitly included Hindemith's Ite, angeli veloces and Beethoven's Symphony No.1 in the programme.

Dobrin Petkov was born on August 24, 1923 in Dresden, Germany. His father was a famous violin pedagogue, whose students were leading musicians in Bulgaria and abroad. He was only 5 when he began lessons with his father and only 9 when he gave his first solo concert in Sofia.  In 1937 on the insistence of the British Ambassador in Sofia, Charles Bentinck, he was the first Bulgarian to be granted a scholarship to study violin and conducting at the Royal College of Music in London. After he graduated from the Musical Academy he was first appointed in Ruse, then as chief conductor of the Plovdiv National Opera and Sofia National Opera. Petkov was with Sofia Philharmonic from 1963 until 1969, and together they had tours in Beirut and Damascus, in Greece, Italy, France, the Soviet Union and Germany.

According to his personal archives, he conducted over 1,000 concerts on Bulgarian stages, as well as 150 recordings of Beethoven, Brahms, Schuman and many others.

He also conducted many works by Bulgarian and foreign composers for the first time, devoting special attention to the Bulgarian authors: "There is always someone to take care about foreign authors. We should take care about ours," Dobrin Petkov used to say.