Pancho Vladigerov

Pancho Haralanov Vladigerov [ˈpantʃo xaraˈɫaŋov vɫadiˈɡɛr̩ov] (or Wladigeroff, or Wladigerow, or Vladiguerov, or Vladigueroff; Bulgarian: Панчо Хараланов Владигеров; 13 March 1899 – 8 September 1978) was a Bulgarian composer, pedagogue, and pianist.

Vladigerov is arguably the most influential Bulgarian composer of all time. He was one of the first to successfully combine idioms of Bulgarian folk music and the classical music. Part of the so-called Second Generation Bulgarian Composers, he was among the founding members of the Bulgarian Contemporary Music Society (1933), which later became the Union of Bulgarian Composers. Vladigerov marked the beginning of a number of genres in Bulgarian music, including the violin sonata and the piano trio. He was also a very respected pedagogue; his students include practically all notable Bulgarian composers of the next generation, such as Alexander Raichev, Alexander Yossifov, Stefan Remenkov, and many others, as well as the pianist Alexis Weissenberg.

Vladigerov was born in Zürich, Switzerland, but lived in Shumen, Bulgaria. His mother Dr. Eliza Pasternak was a Russian Jew. She might have been a distant relative of the famous writer Boris Pasternak but there is no firm evidence to support such relation. His father Dr. Haralan Vladigerov was a Bulgarian lawyer and a politician. Pancho Vladigerov played the piano and composed from an early age. In 1910, two years after his father's early death, Vladigerov and the rest of his family moved to Sofia, where Pancho started studying composition with Dobri Hristov, the most distinguished Bulgarian composer of his generation.

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