Piano Concerto no. 5 in D major, op. 58

The last of Vladigerov's five piano concertos was completed in 1963, when the composer was sixty-four and had been teaching in Sofia for three decades. It is the shortest and the most concentrated of the set: the virtuoso apparatus of the Second and Third is pared back, the orchestra is handled chamber-fashion for long stretches, and the Bulgarian metric patterns are stated plainly rather than developed. The concerto has been recorded by Bulgarian pianists working with the national radio orchestra, but it has never travelled as the Third has.