Information
Composer: Dimitar Nenov
- Piano Concerto: I. Vivace -
- Piano Concerto: II. Largo ma non troppo adagio -
- Piano Concerto: III. Animato e leggiero -
- Ballade No. 2
Ivo Varbanov, piano
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Emil Tabakov, conductor
Date: 2017
Label: Hyperion
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Before tackling the music and recording, I should like to express my admiration for Ivo Varbanov, the Bulgarian London-based pianist behind this project. Having been forced to abandon performing between 2009 and 2012 due to leukaemia, he has returned to the concert platform and, in order to let us hear the music of his fellow countryman for the first time on a commercial recording, commissioned the printed parts and scores for these two works, as they remain unpublished and handwritten. Dimitar Nenov (1901 53), a name unknown to many of us in the West, was, to quote the booklet (which also outlines the reasons for his obscurity), ‘a polymath of rare magnitude’, a pianist, composer, architect (he designed several railway stations), pedagogue, radio producer and the founder of Bulgaria’s first radio orchestra (1930). An interesting figure.
Whether or not you find his Piano Concerto ‘for piano and large orchestra’ equally interesting must be a matter of personal taste. Composed in 1932 36, its three sections are cast in one continuous movement. Stylistically, it takes from the Romantic symphonic concerto tradition while dipping into polymodal and polytonal areas, sound clusters, percussive effects, jazz and folk song, the whole work constructed in a single overarching sonata form. Throughout its 45 minutes’ duration, the concerto repeatedly summoned in my mind – and I mean this as a compliment – images of film noir, of creepy 1940s psychological thrillers with music by someone like Roy Webb. The piano-writing, for the most part, is of the brutal stamina-sapping kind that requires little subtlety or tonal colouring. The frequent climactic tuttis, especially that in the middle of the central section, pack speaker-crunching punches.
The Ballade No 2 (1943) evokes a similar response. Nenov, though no melodist and to whom economy of means is a foreign concept, is hardly short of ideas. Nearly 22 minutes in length and in an apparently rhapsodic form – where, you ask, will Nenov take us next? – it’s a strangely compelling journey. Once you get on, it’s hard to get off. How often I should like to repeat the journey is a moot point.
-- Jeremy Nicholas, Gramophone
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Dimitar Nenov (December 19, 1901 – August 30, 1953) was a Bulgarian classical pianist, composer, music pedagogue and architect. He studied architecture and music in Dresden, and in master-classes of the noted pianist Egon Petri. Nenov belongs to the Interwar period generation of Bulgarian composers, the so-called Second Generation Bulgarian Composers. As composer, pianist and architect, Nenov was among the key figures of the cultural elite of Interwar Bulgaria. As a teacher, he was Manager and professor of the Private Conservatory in Sofia, and from 1943, professor of piano at the Sofia Conservatoire.
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Ivo Varbanov studied to play the piano in his home town Pleven in Bulgaria, then in Italy and in the U.K. at the Royal Northern College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music. His performances include concertos, recitals and chamber music in more than twenty countries across three continents. Varbanov is a recipient of the Ivan Vazov Award for the popularisation of Bulgarian Culture abroad, and in 2011 he was awarded the Silver Lion Award from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. To date, he has made thirteen commercial recordings for Hyperion Records, Gega New, B.N.R., Lorelt Records and ICSM Records.
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