Bay Ganyo Suite

Veselin Stoyanov turned to Aleko Konstantinov's satirical sketches, published in 1894, for the grotesque symphonic suite Bay Ganyo of 1941 — the score that made his name. The first three movements follow episodes from the opening part of the book: Bay Ganyo travels, Bay Ganyo in Vienna, and the trader's amusements. Deliberate heaviness, a lumbering motor rhythm and caricatured harmony with jazz inflections mark the character, and those motifs return distorted through the cycle. In Vienna the confrontation is musical as well: the protagonist's clumsy ruchenitsa set against the elegant waltz of the woman he pursues.