Piano Concerto no. 1 in A minor, op. 6

Vladigerov wrote his First Piano Concerto in 1918, at nineteen, while studying in Berlin, where he had gone as a boy with his twin brother Luben and stayed for two decades. It is the work of a student of the German tradition — Liszt and Rachmaninov are audible in the layout of the solo part — but the finale already turns to Bulgarian dance rhythm, and the pattern of a virtuoso concerto opening outward into folk material would hold for all five of his piano concertos. He played the solo part himself in the years that followed.