Sasha Popov

The father of Bulgarian symphonic music, and its first casualty. Born in Rousse in 1899 into a family of musicians, Sasha Popov was playing the violin at four and touring the country at seven; he studied in Vienna, worked with Otakar Ševčík, and was named by the Austrian press among the leading violinists of his generation. At twenty-nine he put the instrument down. The Academic Symphony Orchestra he founded in 1928 gave its first concert on 4 March 1929 and became, by way of the Royal Symphony Orchestra of 1936, the Sofia Philharmonic — the orchestra Nayden Todorov directs today. Popov led it until February 1956, founded orchestras in Varna and Pleven along the way, and, once removed from his own ensemble, built the Collegium for Chamber Music instead. In 1962 he left Bulgaria for Tel Aviv, Cairo and finally Pasadena. He died in California in 1976, having at last been permitted to come home. Several points are given twice over: the narrative puts the violin aside in 1928, at twenty-nine, makes the ensemble the Royal Symphony Orchestra in 1936 and ends in Pasadena; the biography gives 1936 for the violin, 1935 for the Royal orchestra and Los Angeles. Born on 11 July 1899 to the bandmaster Dimitar Hristov Popov and the music teacher Mara Popova, he studied with Petko Naumov and Josef Schwerner, then in Vienna with Karl Pirl and Otokar Ševčík, who taught him without fee. Between 1926 and 1928 alone he gave over 250 solo concerts; the orchestra took the name Sofia State Philharmonic in 1949, and he was its chief conductor from 1945. His daughter was the singer Valeri Popova and his granddaughter Alexandrina Pendatchanska; he died of a heart attack on the way to the airport on 12 August 1976, his ashes buried in Sofia in 1999.