Emil Kamilarov

In 1961 Emil Kamilarov took first prize at the Premio Paganini in Genoa, and was twice given Paganini's own violin to play there. He studied in Sofia, served the leading Bulgarian orchestras as concertmaster and taught for many years as a professor at the conservatory in Sofia, while a solo and chamber career took him well beyond Bulgaria. With the violinist Dina Schneidermann he formed Duo Deschka, which recorded works for two violins by Viotti. From the 1980s he lived in Uppsala. He sat on the juries of the Premio Paganini and the Wieniawski Competition in Poznań, and died in 2007; an international festival and violin competition in Sofia carry his name. He founded the Bulgarian Chamber Orchestra in Sofia in the early 1960s, and the move to Sweden with Dina Schneidermann, his wife, brought with it a music school of their own and teaching in Gothenburg as well as Uppsala. He judged at Genoa in 1970, 1986 and 1996, and the National Academy of Music in Sofia made him an honorary doctor in 2001.