Rachenitsa (Thracian Dances)

Petko Staynov, blind from the age of eleven, wrote the Thracian Dances in the mid-1920s, shortly after returning from studies in Dresden. The suite gathers four dances built on the asymmetrical metres of the Thracian plain; the Rachenitsa left the suite early and became a concert piece in its own right, played by Bulgarian orchestras for a century. Staynov did not harmonise collected tunes. He wrote his own melodies in the idiom, then gave them a symphonic scale and an orchestral brilliance that had not previously been attempted with this material in Bulgaria.