Denitza Lavchieva

Denitza Lavchieva made her concerto debut in Bulgaria Hall as a teenager. Having previously studied piano, she began learning the clarinet with Radislav Radev before entering the Lyubomir Pipkov National School of Music. Born in Sofia in 1980, she studied at the National Academy of Music with Petko Radev, at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and in Vienna with Peter Schmidl, principal clarinet of the Vienna Philharmonic, on a Herbert von Karajan Foundation scholarship. She received Bulgarian National Radio's Musician of the Year award in the Debut category, and the Ministry of Culture has recognised her twice, in 2004 and 2021. Her recital list runs to Wigmore Hall, the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Musikverein and Suntory Hall. In Finland she was principal clarinet of Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä and co-principal of the Tampere Philharmonic until 2016, and she has taught at the University of Central Finland, at the Richard Wagner Conservatory in Vienna, and at the Talent Music Master Courses in Brescia since 2015. From 2020 she contributed a weekly classical music podcast to Bulgarian National Television's The Eternal Music. Lavchieva appeared as a clarinet soloist at the Thracia Summer Music Festival in Plovdiv in 1997. The Wigmore Hall recital was given in 2007 and the Carnegie Hall one in 2008. Mozart's clarinet music is among her recordings.