Stefan Popov

Stefan Popov went to Moscow in 1961 and spent five years at the Conservatoire in the studios of Sviatoslav Knushevitsky and Mstislav Rostropovich. Born in 1940, he took prizes at competitions in Moscow, Geneva, Vienna and Florence, a medal at the Tchaikovsky Competition of 1966, and an award from the Union of Soviet Composers for his playing of Russian music. He taught in the United States in the first half of the 1970s — at Boston University, and as head of the cello faculty of the New England Conservatory — and from 1977 was professor of cello at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where a long succession of players passed through his class; masterclasses and competition juries have taken him across Europe and beyond. In 2006 he made his own transcription of Beethoven's Violin Concerto for the cello, on the reasonable ground that Beethoven never wrote one. The Eva Janzer Memorial Cello Center named him Chevalier du violoncelle in 2008. Twice in the early 2000s the Sofia Philharmonic engaged him as its cello soloist: Elgar's concerto in Bulgaria Hall on 13 December 2001, in a programme completed by Sibelius and Bruckner, and Brahms's Double Concerto at the opening of the 2004–2005 season.