The Easter concert “Composers and Faith: Between the Earthly and the Heavenly” will impress the audience in Vratsa, conductor Ivan Iliev promised

The program I proposed for the Easter concert of the Symphony-Vratsa will impress the audience in Vratsa both with the star soloists who participate and with the works, conductor Ivan Iliev told journalists. According to the maestro, the program is an eclecticism between apparently diametrically different schools of composers – in the West and in the East, and with some of the brightest representatives of both schools – Rimsky-Korsakov, with his fantastic Easter Overture on liturgical themes and Gabriel Faure with “Requiem” and “Pavana”.
“The interesting thing about these works is that they were written in the same period. In this musical mosaic we observe a combination of exactly this Christian approach from the East and the West, in which I find many things in common both as an idea and as a message. We have this Christian humility in both Korsakov and Fauré, but differently expressed. Fauré’s requiem is a very interesting example in the requiems we know, filled with humility, in which the aggressive part of our consciousness is eliminated. This is a prayer in which there is no element of wanting more from the Creator, but an incredible humility, which is strange to observe in Rimsky-Korsakov’s work as well,” noted the maestro.
He expressed his satisfaction with working with the Vratsa Symphony, which, in his words, is “a full-fledged, full-blooded orchestra, functioning at a high level.” Iliev also gave high praise to the soloists in the upcoming concert – “the star soprano Christina Oltean from the Bucharest Opera, the fantastic baritone Petar Danailov, whom the Bulgarian audience knows well, and also the Pleven municipal choir Gena Dimitrova.” The Pleven Choir replaced the Romanian Euphonia originally included in the program, and this became the reason for changing the original date of the concert to April 26.