Fidosi Kerchev

The Crystal Lyre for 2024 went to Fidosi Kerchev in the young-performer category, for a recital of Schumann, Prokofiev and Liszt at Bulgaria Hall. Born in Razgrad in 1998, he finished the Lyubomir Pipkov National School of Music in Sofia in 2017 and continued in Paris, at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional and the Schola Cantorum, and then at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, where he took his master's degree with the highest distinction in 2022. His repertoire runs from Bach and Beethoven to the large Romantic works of Chopin, Liszt and Tchaikovsky. He has given recitals in Tokyo, Paris and Brussels, and made his debut with the Sofia Philharmonic under Konstantin Ilievski. In Brussels he worked in Johan Schmidt's class from 2019 and took his bachelor's degree there in 2020. First prizes came at the Breughel competition in Brussels in 2019, the Albert Roussel competition in Sofia and the Bach competition in Japan, and he had already been nominated for a Crystal Lyre as a schoolboy in 2016; he has played as soloist with the Royal Orchestra of Liège, the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony, the New Symphony Orchestra and the Rousse Philharmonic Orchestra, and in February 2020 represented his conservatoire at a concert for Queen Mathilde of Belgium.