Krasimir Kyurkchiyski

Kyurkchiyski arranged Bulgarian folk songs for concert performance. Born in Troyan in 1936, he studied composition with Pancho Vladigerov at the Bulgarian State Conservatory, with sources dating his graduation to 1962 or 1963, and did postgraduate work in Moscow under Dmitri Shostakovich. He wrote for the State Ensemble for Folk Songs and Dances from 1962, later conducting the Philip Kutev ensemble and the Bulgarian Radio women's choir that the world came to know as The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices. His String Quartet took the Grand Prix for a foreign composition at the Paris Music Weeks in 1966. The catalogue also holds a piano concerto, the operas Yula and A Votre Santé, the cantata Paisiy Hilendarski, film and theatre scores, and the ballet The Goat Horn. He died in 2011. He worked as a conductor of the state ensemble of folk songs and dances and of the folk song ensemble of the committee for television and radio and in his last years lived and worked as a freelance artist in the village of Bozhentsi near Gabrovo; he wrote two operas and a ballet, vocal-instrumental works, orchestral and chamber music, choral songs, instrumental pieces, arrangements of folk songs and film music, and he was born in Troyan on 22 June 1936 and died on 15 December 2011. Kalimanku Denku, Pilentse pee, Izpoved, Zableyalo mi agantse and Mesechinko, lyo are among the arrangements Marcel Cellier took into The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices, the series that won a Grammy. The Diaphonic Study, the Concerto for Orchestra, the Variations on a Theme of Handel, the Adagio and Aria for string orchestra and the First Piano Concerto have appeared in orchestral programmes. His music has been performed in Italy, France, Russia, Germany and Australia.