Art Hour: Sketches of twentieth- and twenty-first-century music for flute and piano

Polina Antonova (piano) and Petia Stefanova (flute) will present on 26 May (Friday) 2017, in the Auditorium of BAS, within the Art Hour initiative of the Institute of Art Studies works for flute and piano by four famous composers belonging to different generations: Krasimir Kyurkchiyski, Rumen Boiadjiev Jr, Pierre Sancan and Robert Muczynski.
Krasimir Kyurkchiyski (1936–2011) composed two operas and a ballet; vocal-instrumental works; orchestral and chamber music; choral songs; instrumental pieces; film music. He also arranged folksongs. In 1966 he won the Grand Prix in Paris Music Weeks Composition Competition. Song and Dance are two genre pieces united in a small cycle based on folk motifs.
Rumen Boyadjiev Jr (b. 1979) wrote film music for features, documentaries and animations, ballets and modern dance pieces, stage, applied and chambers music, works for percussion instruments. He received the National Film Academy’s Film Composer 2010 prize. The Little Match Girl is a fantasia for clarinet and piano based on Hans Christian Andersen’s tale. Now it will be performed for flute and piano. The piece makes musical overtures of a kind to the romantic nineteenth-century mysticism and is not connected with his children’s operetta of the same name.
Pierre Sancan (1916–2008) was a French composer, pianist, teacher and conductor. In 1943, he won the Conservatoire’s Prix de Rome for composition, with his cantata La Légende de Icare. Sancan composed an opera, Ondine; Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, Symphony for Strings (1961), etc. Sancan’s Sonatine for Flute and Piano (1946) is his best-known work, and has been a popular staple for flute players since its publication. It is included in the programmes of prestigious competitions for flute.
Robert Muczynski (1929–2010) was a Polish-American composer, enjoying international recognition. He composed works for piano, chamber, orchestral, film music, etc. Works by Muczynski have appeared with increasing frequency on programmes in the US, Europe, the Far East, Australia and Mexico. His Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Chamber Orchestra Op. 41 was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Music (1970). His Sonata for Flute and Piano, Op. 14 (1961) received the Concours Internationale Prize in Nice, France, in 1961 and is probably Muczynski’s most widely performed work.
Petia Stefanova (flute) formed a duo with Polina Antonova (piano) in 2004; winners in Earth and Music International Competition for Instrumentalists in 2004; in 2005, selected to participate in the European Broadcasting Union competition; recordings for the Bulgarian National Radio.
As soloists they have received awards in prestigious international and national competitions; participants in the festivals of New Bulgarian Music, Contemporary Acoustic Music; Promises, Talents; Masters International Festival; Music Seriously; Young Virtuosi; Sofia Summer, Sound and Connection, Chamber Stage, Sofia; Young Musicians; Euroart Prague Festival; Mozart Festival, Prague; Pianissimo, etc.
Presently, Petia Stefanoval teaches at Angel Kanchev University of Ruse; Polina Antonova is Asst. Prof, Department of Music, Institute of Art Studies.