Атанас Кръстев

Atanas Krastev took his master's degree in cello at the Pancho Vladigerov National Academy of Music in Sofia in 2012, in the class of Anatoly Krastev, and between 2011 and 2014 studied with Natalia Shakhovskaya at the Escuela Superior de Musica Reina Sofia in Madrid, working besides in masterclasses with David Geringas, Antonio Meneses, Frans Helmerson, Arto Noras, Natalia Gutman, Lluis Claret, Alban Gerhardt, Young-Chang Cho, Robert Cohen, Maria Kliegel, Reinhard Latzko and Thomas Demenga. He completed a doctorate in 2016 and teaches cello at the academy in Sofia, and he has led masterclasses at the summer academy of arts in Sozopol, at the music academies of Lviv and Dnipro and the National University of Arts in Kharkiv, at the National University of Music in Bucharest and at the Ikon Arts summer academy in Transylvania; he has sat on the jury of the international cello competition in Split. Sixteen first and special prizes came between 2001 and 2015 from competitions in Austria, Spain, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Bulgaria, among them the chamber music prize in Madrid presented by Queen Sofia, the Liezen international cello competition in Austria in 2014 and the Jeunesses Musicales competition in Belgrade in 2015; the Golden Muse and Crystal Lyre are among his awards and the Golden Age award of the Ministry of Culture in 2018. He has played in Austria, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Russia, Greece, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Serbia and Brazil, and has been a member of the cello trio Cellissimo since 2002. Born in Sofia into a family of musicians, he has performed as a soloist with orchestras, under Vassil Kazandjiev, Emil Tabakov, Plamen Djurov, Angel Stankov, Nayden Todorov, Jacques Mercier and Oliver Gilmour among others, and he plays in the Mozart de Deloitte and Oscar Espla de Asisa trios and the Brahms de El Mundo piano quartet; Thomas Carroll, Daniel Veis and Johannes Goritzki are further names on his list of masterclasses. The tally of his competition prizes and the names of his Bulgarian awards differ between sources: one gives sixteen first and special prizes with the Crystal Lyre in both 2007 and 2012, the other fifteen prizes with the Golden Muse in 2007 and the Crystal Lyre in 2012, alongside a diploma and prize of the Ministry of Culture.