Jewish Poem, op. 47

The Jewish Poem of 1951 is Vladigerov's most personal orchestral score: his mother, Eliza Pasternak, came from a Russian Jewish family, and the material is drawn from Jewish liturgical and folk melody rather than from the Bulgarian sources that dominate the rest of his output. It brought him the Dimitrov Prize, then Bulgaria's highest artistic award, in 1952. Shostakovich, who knew the work, is quoted as saying that a piece like it is written once in a hundred years. Its writing for solo woodwind and for divided strings is among the most elaborate Vladigerov attempted.