Milena Mollova

Milena Mollova has recorded for Balkanton and Melodiya. A pupil of Emil Gilels, she took prizes at the Tchaikovsky, Long-Thibaud, Beethoven Vienna and Viotti competitions and at the World Youth Festival. She has been professor of piano at the Pancho Vladigerov National Academy of Music in Sofia. Nayden Todorov has conducted her since 1993, first with the youth orchestra in Plovdiv and later in Sofia. Mollova appeared as a piano soloist at the Thracia Summer Music Festival in Plovdiv in 1997. Dimitar Nenov and Panka Pelishek also formed her, and she was a laureate of the ARD competition in Munich; among the conductors she played under were Dobrin Petkov, Kirill Kondrashin, Kazuyoshi Akiyama, Rudolf Baumgartner and Georges Tzipine. She presented the thirty-two Beethoven sonatas as a cycle of nine concerts, and gave the violin sonatas complete twice over, with Dina Schneiderman and then with Georgi Badev, later partnering Mario Hossen; her programmes have taken in Krassimir Kyurkchiyski, Dimitar Hristov, Todor Stoykov and Georgi Arnaudov. She has also taught at the Northern Greece Conservatory in Thessaloniki and headed the music department of the New Bulgarian University.