Sasha Popov – the father of Bulgarian symphonic culture. Bright personality, tireless patriot – 2024-08-07 13:56:30

/ world today news/ The great Sasha Popov, undoubtedly the greatest Bulgarian conductor of all time, left us 41 years ago. But in the history of our culture, he will remain forever as the “father of Bulgarian symphony”, the first to build orchestras, including our national philharmonic, trained several generations of musicians, educated the public in a taste for great music. Today, we simply do not have individuals with his talent and his scale.

He was born under the sign of Cancer on July 12, 1899 in Rousse / where in 1891 the first Philharmonic Society in our country was founded. He grew up in a family of musicians. His mother is a pianist and his father is a violinist. He started playing the violin at the age of four, his first teacher being his father. At the age of seven, he has already been declared a “miracle child” and is making his first triumphant concert tour around Bulgaria. Later, his family moved to Sofia, where Sasha Popov studied under Petko Naumov. In 1908 he went to Vienna. In the Austrian capital, he became a student of Professor Karl Pearl and the famous violin teacher Otokar Sevcik. He was accepted as a student at the Vienna Conservatory. In 1913 he toured as a virtuoso violinist with great success in Russia. In 1926-1928 he gave nearly 250 concerts all over Europe. He is recognized as one of the five first violinists in the world! After his return to Bulgaria, he was appointed conductor of the Academic Symphony Orchestra / ASO/, which began his great conducting career, and, unfortunately, in 1935 he abandoned the violin. In 1936, on the basis of the Academic Symphony Orchestra, he created the “Royal Symphony Orchestra”, the predecessor of today’s Sofia Philharmonic. With this orchestra he performed many concerts in Bulgaria and abroad. After September 9, he was expelled from the national philharmonic he founded, as a “former conductor of the Tsar’s orchestra”/!/ and sent to Varna. In 1945, he founded a new symphony orchestra there, the future Varna Philharmonic. In 1953 he also founded the Pleven Symphony Orchestra. After some time, he was reinstated in the “Royal Symphony Orchestra”, in 1949 renamed the Sofia State Philharmonic, until February 11, 1956, when he was prematurely retired. And although he worked hard, devotedly for the orchestra and especially for the popularization of Bulgarian symphonic music, there are musicians, among them famous composers, who are ungrateful to him and decide to drive him away. Thus, the greatest and most deserving, the founder in 1956 was deprived of his orchestra. Unemployed, in his prime as a conductor, aged 57, he founded a first-class ensemble, the Collegium for Chamber Music Orchestra. But the envious continue to poison his life. And this is truly a shameful moment in the history of Bulgarian musical culture. Not a single organization, nor the unions of composers, of musicians, trade unions, our great composers and musicians – does not come to his defense, and he worked tirelessly for everyone! At the same time, it is world famous and recognized. In fact, together with the tenor Petar Raichev, he is our first musician with world fame. At the same time, the recipient of a number of state awards, not only from Bulgaria, but also from many European countries. But despite this, in 1962 he was forced to leave Bulgaria. He went abroad, where he successively worked in Tel Aviv, Israel, Cairo, Egypt and finally settled in Pasadena, near Los Angeles. In the States, he was highly appreciated, gave many concerts and was the first Bulgarian conductor to lead opera performances there.

In July 1999, the centenary of his birth should have been celebrated, but unfortunately nothing significant was done even by the Sofia Philharmonic, founded by the famous musician in 1928. And could it have adopted his name, just as the Bucharest one proudly bears the name of the great Romanian musician George Enescu. The capital municipality and the Ministry of Culture could place a monument or a bust of him in the Boris garden next to the other great men of Bulgaria. It is commendable that the Ruse municipality named a street in the city after his noble name.
And Sasha Popov was recognized worldwide – first as one of the greatest violinists of the century, and then as a conductor. He not only built the Bulgarian symphonic work, he also prepared the audience for it. His concerts, some of them outdoors, instilled a taste for great music in thousands of Bulgarians, until today we don’t have such apostles. Today’s conductors of his high class are also few, and some of them are even without the necessary education / with fake diplomas / and insufficient talent and qualification for the orchestras in which they work. But that’s why they are masters of self-promotion.

And Sasha Popov, according to the few phono-recordings, and also according to the memories of his contemporaries, was a conductor of a high class, comparable to the great conductors of his era: Abendrot, Ferechik, Rovitsky, Kodrashin, Bruck…
Maestro Sasha Popov was a large-scale, generous, noble person. It was given out completely, without a residue. We don’t have those anymore today. He also gave way to a huge number of our musicians – orchestra players, soloists, conductors, actively supported Bulgarian composers as well, very often performing their works for the first time. He also formed a number of orchestras in our country, it was his idea for the “March Music Days” festival in Ruse, for the first national competitions for young musicians.

This is what the conductor Vasil Stefanov says in his memories / in his time violinist-concertmaster at the Philharmonic/ : “For Sasha Popov’s style of work, it was absolutely impossible to go to a rehearsal or a concert without having worked out the orchestral part perfectly. His gesture, his face, literally made us, the orchestra players, extract exactly the sounds he required. He conducted with his face, with his eyes, with his eyebrows, with a slight puckering of his lips, and above all with barely perceptible movements of his fingers and wrists, while sculpting the musical phrases. His most characteristic quality was the maximum exactingness towards the orchestra, but above all, towards himself personally…”

The unique case is known, when after an unintentional minor mistake he made at a concert in SofiaSasha Popov issued an order as director for…his own punishment/!/, because he was firmly convinced that the conductor should be an example to the orchestra players in every respect.

Prof. Dimitar Sagaev, whom I had the honor of knowing, wrote a valuable book about him. In it, he offers us a strong, emotional text, but also supported by sufficient facts. His book “sounds” like a “sonata” or rather a “theme with variations”. The complex, large-scale, generous and extremely sensitive personality of Sasha Popov is understood in depth. Dimitar Sagaev closely followed Popov’s path in our country, and later, when the conductor emigrated to the USA, he maintained regular correspondence with him. And at the same time, the author decided that the portrait would be incomplete if he did not provoke and interview a number of musicians of different generations who touched the great personality. From which, of course, the book has gained a lot. Because some give what is significant to the great creator, but others return good with evil. Typical Bulgarian, right?! And so it becomes clear to us why this bright person and tireless patriot, despite the recognition and success abroad, suffers outside our country and wants to return at all costs. Let him continue to work for his Bulgaria! Something that rarely happens anymore in our country…
On August 12, 1976, after a long exile, Sasha Popov was “pardoned” by his comrades from the Central Committee and can now return to Bulgaria. But on the way to the airport in Los Angeles, his heart could not withstand the great excitement and he died of a massive heart attack.

Pancho Vladigerov and Sasha Popov in the early 1950s,

when Sasha Popov was still the conductor of the Sofia Philharmonic

Sasha Popov as a young virtuoso violinist, in the 1930s, recognized by world critics as “one of the five greatest violinists” in the world.