Rachenitsa (Thracian Dances) (arr. for piano and orchestra by Victor Chuchkov)

Petko Staynov wrote the Thracian Dances in the mid-1920s, shortly after returning from studies in Dresden; blind from the age of eleven, he composed away from the page and dictated the scores. The suite's four dances are built on the asymmetrical metres of the Thracian plain, and the Rachenitsa detached itself early to be played on its own. Victor Chuchkov's later arrangement transfers the dance to piano and orchestra. Staynov wrote his own melodies rather than harmonising collected ones, and gave them a symphonic weight no Bulgarian composer had previously attempted with such material.