Plamena Nikitasova

The Fifth Violin Concerto of Vieuxtemps is a player's choice rather than a promoter's — everything is asked of the soloist and no famous tune comes back in exchange. Plamena Nikitassova played it on consecutive evenings, 6 and 7 April 1995, in Varna and Dobrich with the Varna Philharmonic, in a programme completed by Mendelssohn's Hebrides overture and Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. She was born in Varna in 1975 and had studied in Geneva with Margarita Karafilova-Piguet and in Vienna with Michael Frischenschlager before the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and Chiara Banchini turned her towards the older repertories and the older instruments. She has worked from Basel since, playing a baroque violin attributed to Sebastian Klotz at historical pitch beside a modern violin made for her by Pierre Dalphin in Geneva in 1992, and appearing regularly with Rudolf Lutz and Jörg-Andreas Bötticher. Between 2013 and 2017 she was concertmaster of the orchestra of the J. S. Bach Foundation, and she founded the ensembles Entr'Acte Basel and Les Élémens. She teaches baroque violin, baroque viola and chamber music in masterclasses.