Neva Krasteva

In 1978 Neva Krasteva opened the first organ class in Bulgaria, at the National Academy of Music, and a national school of organ playing grew out of it. Born in Sofia in 1946, she took her degrees at the Moscow Conservatoire — organ with Leonid Roizman, musicology with Yuri Kholopov — and continued postgraduate organ study in Prague and Zurich with Jiří Reinberger, with a period of composition work in Poland with Witold Lutosławski. Her concert career began at Bulgaria Hall in 1974 and has taken her across Europe and Asia; she has twice played the complete organ works of Bach in Sofia. At the Academy she taught organ interpretation, counterpoint and fugue, and the history of polyphonic forms, and she later headed the organ class at New Bulgarian University. Her own compositions for organ, chamber forces and choir include settings of Vazov and of Goethe, and she has written extensively on musical theory. Among her distinctions are the Crystal Lyre and the medal of Sts Cyril and Methodius. She taught at the Bulgarian State Conservatory from 1973, opened the first organ class in Bulgaria there in 1978 and continued to lead it at New Bulgarian University, was made professor of counterpoint and fugue in 1994 and in 1978 attended a composition master class in Poland at the Lutosławski villa, where she presented her Heterophonic Miniatures for organ of 1974; she is a member of the Bach societies. Her playing was issued on LP and recorded for Bulgarian National Radio and Television, and her theoretical work was gathered into the three volumes of Music Theory Studies.