site.bta11-year-old Pianist from Ukraine to Perform First Solo Concert in Balchik

An eleven-year-old pianist, a refugee from the war in Ukraine, will give her first solo concert in the northern Bulgarian Black Sea town of Balchik, said the local community centre. Sofia Steblovskaya will meet her audience under the motto "Peace for the Children of Earth" on August 12.

Sofia is a fifth-grader at the Odessa State Music School-Lycaeum and has prizes from competitions for young pianists in Czechia, Luxembourg, Spain, Ukraine, and the Newport Virtuosi competition in the USA.

"It is a great pleasure for me to work with such a gifted child. Sofia surprised me with her virtuoso performance of Bach's Prelude and Fugue, when, entering the community centre, I heard her playing," Stella Arkalieva, a teacher at the community centre, told BTA. According to her, the concert programme is very difficult - with works from the classics that are usually performed by music school graduates.

In Balchik, Sofia will perform works by Bach, Haydn, Liszt, Grieg, Lysenko, Shamo and Rachmaninoff, among others. She will also play Argentine Dream, an instrumental piece that she herself composed.

Sofia has found a second home in Balchik together with her mother. She dreams of becoming a music student in Vienna or Warsaw one day.