March 9 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of prof. Konstantin Iliev. He is one of the most significant contemporary Bulgarian composers, his work is also associated with the so-called "Bulgarian musical avant-garde". In 1946 Iliev graduated from the State Academy of Music (now the National Academy of Music). He studied composition under prof. П. Vladigerov, conducting under prof. He studied violin with prof. Vl. Avramov. He specialized in conducting at the Prague Academy of Music under prof. В. Talich and composition under J. Rzidki, attended the quarter-tone composition classes of prof. Alois Haba (1946-47). He wrote in various genres: operas, ballets, cantata-oratorio works, symphonies and other works for symphony orchestra, Tempi concertati for instrumental ensembles, string quartets, chamber-ensemble and solo music, film and theatre music.
After his return to Bulgaria in 1947 he founded the State Symphony Orchestra (DSO) Ruse (1947-48), after a short break he took over as Chief Conductor of the DSO and the National Opera Ruse (1949-52). Since 1967 he has been professor of orchestral conducting at the National Academy of Music. He worked in Varna, Dobrich and Sofia.
He is the author of three books, articles and studies.
In the culture of Ruse, which varies in a wide creative range, I am interested mainly in those accents that shaped the timeless image of the city of the "free spirit".
Why do I name the column "canon"? I tend to see the canon as a principle for creating and strengthening collective identity. The cultural canon possesses all the features and preconditions for its "establishment" according to the principle of utilitarian /public utility/ selectivity.
Gift is power, talent is measure.
"Not all called are called." The prosperity of a nation depends not on the number of smart people, but on their place in the value system. Recently I heard on the radio /for once/ talk about the "elite of the intelligentsia". Issues relating to elites have never particularly concerned me. But I've been trying to answer what is meant by "intellectuals". I have vaguely remembered a definition: 'An intellectual is a person who forms his opinion without having to read the editorial of a newspaper and without being influenced by public sentiment...'"
When you write about Konstantin Iliev, first it is with great respect for his personality and work, and then you inevitably associate the name with the avant-garde in music and in the art he created both as a conductor and as a public figure, in addition to being a composer.
I vaguely recall the scandals and sentiments of performing the works of the so-called avant-garde composers. I wouldn't dare bother you with qualitative assessments of the "avant-garde" here. But broadly speaking, I recall that it served to stick labels ranging from "inept" to "formalist" to "decadent" to "atonalist." Max Frisch asked his friend Brecht - and he was accused of formalism, "What does it mean to be a formalist?". Brecht replies, "Someone just hates you" /quoting verbatim from Max Frisch's Diaries/.
At one point in the mid-twentieth century such a "formalist avant-garde" appeared in Bulgaria in the person of Konstantin Iliev and Lazar Nikolov, followed later by Vasil Kazandjiev and Ivan Spasov.
Then the young K. Iliev (23-24 years old) also has the bonus of being a conductor, i.e. having his own tribune. Generally speaking this means that if he has his own opinion he can express it. Moreover, he is already one of the first winners of the Dimitrov Prize /degree III - for the musical direction of the opera "Sold Bride" in Ruse, and the second time in 1959 "as a performer of symphonic works"/. And so "The freedom to be present in culture is not measured in your agreement with the power dimensions of culture, but in the courage to express yourself outside them" /words said about the writer Yordan Valchev - famous for his memoirs about the concentration camp "Kutian", repressed before 1989 and notorious after the changes/.
Here I would like to remind those who have read the "historical" facts, and others who are familiar with the factual and abundant "interpretive" texts, of the "historical time" in which the "avant-garde" was born in the person of K. Iliev. In other words, event-wise: first of all, the Treaty of Neuilly /1919/ is one of the most tragic pages in our history, leading to the Second National Catastrophe. It was in 1919, on 23 April, that the first opera production took place in Ruse. It was the opera "Kamen and Cena". It was also from this time that the Contemporary Music Society was founded, where discussions about the Bulgarian musical style were held.
Then comes 9.ΙX. as a symbol for the beginning of a "new age". What happens after this date is the "historical" rock on which the Bulgarian avant-garde appears. In 1948, the famous Zhdanov Decree was issued, which also pointed out the concrete enemy, the COMPOSITORS - FORMALISTS[i]. The so-called "struggle against formalism" began, which meant the total denigration of all artists who deviated, even by a millimetre, from the officially imposed dogmas of how art should be made. Such "transgressions" in the second half of the 1930s in the USSR meant more than just problems at work. Such transgressions were very often punishable by firing squad. I am referring here to such names as Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Myaskovsky, etc.
In those years the Ruse Symphony Orchestra (1947) and the Ruse Opera (1949) were born on the musical map of Bulgaria. Their opening was a reflection of the Communist Party's policy to control cultural processes in the country. Yet the then 25-year-old K. Iliev dared to perform Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 for the first time in Bulgaria (10 September 1949). What audacity it takes to skip the Zhdanov decree, and all that was happening in the Stalinist USSR, and which was copied verbatim at that time in Bulgaria.
Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata is the first premiere production of the newly established opera theatre. It was with this performance, beloved to this day, that K. Iliev in Ruse. "The four-year stay in this city had a huge significance for my development as a conductor and composer". Thus laconically K. Iliev. Iliev sums up the importance of the Ruse years in his creative evolution - a short but very intense period. From 1949 to 1952 he was the chief conductor of both the State Symphony Orchestra and the Opera.
For the period 1949-52. The Ruse Symphony Orchestra performed 40 programmes. For a young orchestral ensemble, which at that time also participated in opera performances, this amount is impressive and shows the scale of K. Iliev, especially considering his repertoire policy. Along with Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Weber, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, César Franck, Berlioz, Wagner, Richard Strauss, Shostakovich /by the way, this list is respectable not only for a young orchestra, but even for today's Ruse orchestra/. As you can see, the repertoire also includes music of the 20th century. Also present is the music of Bulgarian composers Petko Stainov, Pancho Vladigerov, Veselin Stoyanov, Dimitar Nenov, Marin Goleminov, Georgi Tutev, Lazar Nikolov, the then young Vasil Kazandjiev, as well as his own compositions. As K. Iliev, he conducted "a pre-planned programme for introducing the Ruthenian audience to contemporary music". His intentions were clear: to educate the taste of the young listener. It is no coincidence that in 1951 the orchestra was awarded the special prize of the Union of Bulgarian Composers for "the best interpretation of Bulgarian symphonic music".
The Ruse Opera's breakthrough is of course more difficult than that of the orchestra. As K. Iliev himself later remarked, many people in the city in early 1949 were unaware of the amount of advance preparation and hard work it took to make an opera happen. This is why the first opera performance of La Traviata was on 27.11.1949. By April 1950 it had 40 performances and to full houses. Apart from "La Traviata" within about three and a half years K. Iliev carried out four more operas "Madame Butterfly", "Don Pasquale", for which the critics especially noted the role of the conductor, "Sold Bride" and "Rigoletto".
In spite of his excessive employment as chief conductor of the symphony orchestra and the opera, K. Iliev was actively composing, laying the foundations of a new style in his music. In fact, it was at this time that Ruse became the city that first encountered Bulgarian "New Music". It was then that works were born that revealed the new stylistic features of his music, paving new paths in Bulgarian musical creativity. The main works that K. Iliev created in Ruse are. It was also in Ruse that K. Iliev premiered two works by Lazar Nikolov - the First Piano Concerto, with L. Nikolov himself as soloist (20 November 1949) and the Concerto for String Orchestra (30 November 1951). These premieres were also the cause of fierce criticism regarding the path chosen by Konstantin Iliev, as well as Lazar Nikolov. But Ruse was the place where the first opuses were heard, drawing the new current in Bulgarian music.
In 1952 K. Iliev left Rousse to take up the post of chief conductor of the State Symphony Orchestra in Varna, and four years later he became chief conductor of the Sofia Philharmonic, where he served intermittently until his retirement in 1984. By the end of his conducting career K. Iliev did not break ties with the Ruse Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as with the Ruse Opera.
Konstantin Iliev's journey as a conductor also ended in Ruse - on 15 January, less than two months before his death (6 March this year), he conducted the Jubilee Concert of the Ruse Philharmonic on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the orchestra. Most of the programme of this concert is the same as that of the orchestra's first concert on 4 January 1948, which was also the first concert of K. K. himself. Iliev. Ruse thus became the city that marked the beginning and the end of his remarkable artistic career.
1.03.2024
Dr. Adelaide Yakimova - Furnadjieva
gr. Ruse
