Dimitar Tapkov

Appointed rector of the National Academy of Music in Sofia in 1979, Dimitar Tapkov had come to that institution first as a composition pupil of Marin Goleminov and returned to it as professor of composition and orchestration, teaching several generations of Bulgarian composers. His Peace Cantata of 1976 took first prize at the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris and carried his name beyond the country; Sinfonia breve, the Microsymphony, a Concerto for Orchestra, Variants for string orchestra and a Concertino for bassoon and strings are part of his catalogue, alongside sonatas, choral music, songs and scores for stage and screen. He also directed the Sofia Music Weeks festival. He died in 2011. He worked in the music department of Bulgarian National Radio from 1956 to 1962 and held various leading public and creative posts — secretary of the Union of Bulgarian Composers from 1962 to 1965, director of the Sofia Opera from 1967 to 1970, rector of the State Academy of Music from 1979, deputy director of the scientific association of art studies of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences from 1972 to 1979 and deputy chairman of the committee for culture from 1982 to 1986 — and from 1997 he was the director of the Sofia Music Weeks festival, teaching orchestration at the Conservatory from 1961 and in Plovdiv from 1963 to 1967 and composition in Sofia. He had taken his degree in 1956 and was made full professor in 1976. The children's song cycle Six Children's Games was among the prizewinners at a Moscow festival in 1978, and a good part of the catalogue reached print and record, much of it conducted by Vassil Stefanov. His later teaching took in the academy in Plovdiv again and Shumen University.