Nikolay Marinov

Bulgaria Hall hosted the Musician of the Year 2012 gala on 10 June 2013, with Nikolay Marinov among its soloists; the programme ran from Mozart and Brahms to Bernstein and Roumen Boyadjieff Jr., and gathered several Bulgarian players and singers on one platform. Born in Plovdiv in 2001, he was eleven when he played in that gala. He began the piano at six, gave his first recital at eight in Turkey, finished the Dobrin Petkov National School of Music and Dance Arts in Plovdiv in the class of Svetlana Koseva, and went on to the National Academy of Music in Sofia with Borislava Taneva. First prizes followed at the Flame and Nikolai Rubinstein competitions in Paris, the Mozart competition in Rome, Citta di Spoleto, the Jean Sibelius competition in Finland, Dimitar Nenov, Cantus Firmus, the Liszt-Bartok competition in Sofia with its Gyorgy Ligeti special prize, and Grand Prize Virtuoso in London, with a second prize at the eleventh Alexander Scriabin competition in Paris. He has played in Carnegie Hall, the Royal Albert Hall and the Opera Bastille, and three times taken the Ministry of Culture award.