Victor Chuchkov

Victor Chuchkov studied piano and composition side by side at the Bulgarian State Conservatory, and the two have run in parallel ever since. Born in Gorna Oryahovitsa in 1946, he continued at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome and took the Alfredo Casella and Alessandro Casagrande prizes in Italy as a pianist. His catalogue runs from concert works — the Concerto for Laughter and Orchestra of 1992, the Nostalgia Variations of 1994 — to scores for more than fifty films, and he has recorded in both capacities for EMI, Victor and Balkanton. He has chaired the Union of Bulgarian Composers and taught as professor at the music academy in Sofia. In December 1999 he recorded Rimsky-Korsakov's Piano Concerto in C sharp minor and Arensky's Fantasia on Russian Folksongs with the Plovdiv Philharmonic. Sent to the Vacanze Musicali summer courses in Venice, in 1966 he won with his Venetian Impressions the scholarship of the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, which he completed in 1971 in the composition class of Virgilio Mortari, the piano class of Vincenzo Vitale and a special three-year chamber-music course with Guido Agosti, won the piano scholarship of the Santa Cecilia Academy in the class of Carlo Zecchi and completed the Chigiana summer academy in Siena in chamber music with Riccardo Brengola and the Taormina summer academy in piano with Ornella Santoliquido; he studied composition with Vesselin Stoyanov and piano with Lili Atanasova at the Bulgarian State Conservatory. He chaired the Union of Bulgarian Composers from 1999 to 2005, having been its secretary general since 1990. His stage and concert list includes the children's opera Svetulkata, Letters from the Future of 1981 for voice, rock band and orchestra, a Concerto for violin, cello, piano and orchestra of 2003, the Amadeus Fantasie of 2005 and a Romantic Fantasy of 2009, while the films run from Ivan Kondarev in 1973 to Tilt in 2011. The Varna film festival gave him its Grand Prix in 1973, and he won the Gold Star at the Zecchino d'Oro festival in Bologna.