Symphony no. 1 in D minor, op. 33

Vladigerov wrote his First Symphony in 1938, at the height of his powers and after two decades in which his name had been made by concertos and by the Bulgarian rhapsody Vardar. It is a large four-movement score for full orchestra, dedicated to the Austrian composer and theorist Joseph Marx, and its idiom is the one his listeners knew: long romantic paragraphs, thick orchestral colour, and dance rhythms drawn from Bulgarian metre rather than quoted from folk song. The Belgrade Philharmonic gave the first performance in 1939 under Mihailo Vukdragović. Its D minor is less a key than a temperament — the symphony darkens and brightens by degrees rather than by contrast, and the writing keeps close to the piano-born textures of a composer who was himself a formidable player.