Youth Orchestra Plovdiv

Founded in 1990, the Youth Orchestra Plovdiv is a training ensemble in a city that has never lacked young players: Plovdiv's music school and its Academy of Music, Dance and Fine Arts feed it, and its work is the work every youth orchestra does - teaching the discipline of playing together at the age when that lesson takes hold for life. Within six years of its founding it had toured Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany, recorded for Plovdiv radio and for the national radio in Sofia, and played at festivals in Plovdiv, Pazardzhik, Vratsa, Chirpan, Gabrovo and Vienna; in 1995 it was admitted to the European Federation of National Youth Orchestras. It gave the first Bulgarian performances of works by Johann Christian, Carl Philipp Emanuel and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. Programmes have ranged from Schumann's Nordisches Lied to the Air from Bach's Third Orchestral Suite, and its recordings include the Bach violin concertos.