site.btaConductor Kamdzhalov: "We Took Big Risk to Play Vivaldi to Rome Audience, but Success Was Huge"

Prominent Bulgarian conductor Yordan Kamdzhalov spoke to BTA after a pre-Christmas concert his Genesis Orchestra gave in Rome on December 9, in the conservatory of the National Academy of St Cecilia. 

"We took a huge risk to play Vivaldi's Four Seasons to an Italian audience for our Christmas concert in Rome, but the success was huge," the conductor told BTA. 

"Vivaldi in Italy – this is the same as having foreign musicians coming to Bulgaria to perform Pancho Vladiguerov," Kamdzhalov said. "We took a very big risk, and frankly part of me was prepared for failure, because this is a work of music that is known all over the world by connoisseurs and children alike. The performance proved a big success and the concert goers said that they heard something very familiar but in a new way. They heard a new interpretation," Kamdzhlov said.

"The Bulgarian ambassadors to Rome and to the Holy See were present in the hall and praised the performance. The audience also included many musicians and specialists, I even heard a very interesting comment from a person who is professionally involved in film-making. He said that during the concert he realized that music was stronger than cinema because it leaves greater possibilities for completing the image in one's imagination, rather than providing ready-made models or visual templates. The performance went unexpectedly well and I am grateful to all of my colleagues who performed in it," Kamdzhalov said.

The musician said that on departing to Rome, the attitude of the members of the project had been to give the best and the most meaningful of what they were capable of. Their work was highly appreciated by the full house of the Italian concert. 

"To me, such a performance is the absolute responsibility," Kamdzhalov said. "My specific mindset is that no matter which hall in the world I'm in, whether in Berlin, London, Zurich, Paris or I'm in my hometown of Targovishte, Northeastern Bulgaria, in front of a handful of sixth graders, I go with the thought that reaching out to people is a huge responsibility. Through art, through sound, through music, we touch and educate a person or, respectively, we corrupt them. My aspiration has always been towards education," the conductor said.

"The Italian audience is very demanding and at the same time very spontaneous," he said, adding that after the concert people from the audience came to hug, kiss and have pictures taken with the musicians. 

"Customary for an event in Southern Europe, the concert started with a delay, but everything in Rome was very glitzy and the people showed understanding," Kamdzhalov said.

Commenting the performance of Zornitsa Illarionova, who was first violin in the concert, the conductor pointed out that he was very happy that he had invited her, and not a different violinist. "She lived up to all expectations in a brilliant way, with all the responsibility, professionalism and charisma she has," Kamdzhalov said.

"Being the broad-minded person she is, she agreed to be the concertmaster in the first work in the concert: Symphony No. 8 by William Herschel - the great astronomer, the person with whom extragalactic astronomy begins, and the first man to build a telescope himself, with which the human eye actually dove into space, the author of 24 symphonies and a number of other musical works. This was our special contribution at the Rome concert - with the performance of the symphony we commemorated the 200th death anniversary of this amazing person," Kamdzhalov said.

"Some people said that it was a special moment for them because they knew Vivaldi but they did not know the great astronomer and composer Herschel. The highest praise we heard for Vivaldi's Seasons came from Alberto Bonisoli, the former minister of culture of Italy. As an Italian, he knows Vivaldi's work very well, but he described our performance as extraordinary and noted this was the first time he had heard the piece rendered so completely, with such sensitivity and experiential value. Bonisoli made his comments immediately after the concert, so when an Italian minister of culture says that this is the best, most interesting Vivaldi he has ever heard, I think there is no better assessment than that," Kamdzhalov commented. 

The conductor said the Genesis Orchestra has an invitation to perform in Rome next year as well. 

Back in Bulgaria, the Genesis Orchestra will have a Christmas concert with music by the late architect and composer Dimitar Nenov at the Bulgaria Hall. Kamdzhalov and the orchestra will next give a concert entitled "A Christmas Tale" in the seaside city of Varna at the end of December.