Dobrinka Tabakova

This album marks the culmination of two special Hallé collaborations and includes four major pieces from one of the most distinctive of current British compositional voices.

Sun Triptych is the eagerly-awaited second ECM New Series album by British-Bulgarian composer Dobrinka Tabakova. The first, 2014’s String Paths, made an immediate impact, picking up a Grammy Nomination and superlative reviews, The Strad praising its “glowing tonal harmonies and grand, sweeping gestures,” while the Washington Times hailed it as an “exciting, deeply moving, original and triumphant” recording.

Together with its artistic director Julian Azkoul, the United Strings of Europe develop engaging programs with the aim of finding connections between different works and eras, music from different cultures, connecting familiar with new, and encouraging people to listen to works in different ways and discover new repertoire. With "Hommages," the ensemble celebrates musical traditions, from the myth of Apollo and the muses of Greek antiquity to twentieth-century legends, Carlos Gardel and Astor Piazzolla, reinterpreted through contemporary voices.

Awarded the title Young Steinway Artist in 2020, the Bulgarian pianist Marina Staneva received the 2019 Sam Hutchings Piano Prize and was a 2018 Britten-Pears Young Artist. She has been praised for her serious talent, outstanding musicianship, extraordinary instinctive artistry, and fine technical command. For this her début recording, she presents works by two contrasting Bulgarian composers. Pancho Vladigerov was arguably the most influential Bulgarian composer of all time. He was one of the first successfully to combine idioms of Bulgarian folk music and classical music. He was also among the founding members of the Bulgarian Contemporary Music Society (1933), which later became the Union of Bulgarian Composers. The British-Bulgarian composer Dobrinka Tabakova studied composition under Simon Bainbridge, Diana Burrell, Robert Keeley, and Andrew Schul tz. Her composition Praise was sung at St Paul's Cathedral to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, and she has received commissions from the Royal Philharmonic Society, BBC Radio 3, Cheltenham Music Festival, Britten Sinfonia, Three Choirs Festival, Wigmore Hall, and, in 2014, the PRS Foundation's first UK New Music Biennial.