Allegra through the years

2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014

With its ten editions so far Allegra has established itself as an international festival with an academy without analogue in Bulgaria. The festival follows two main lines in its development. On one hand, as a project in the field of music education, which social impact has been growing over the years through providing funds for scholarships and financial support for Bulgarian participants.

On the other hand, Allegra is a cultural exchange project promoting Bulgaria as an attractive destination for cultural tourism.

Our efforts as organizers are aimed at securing the annual festival, creating our own audience, circle of friends, institutional, corporate and private sponsors, as well as increasing the number of participants from abroad.

2024

10 years Allegra

For two whole weeks we celebrated music! The greatest professionalists of the contemporary classical music scene passing their legacy on to the next generation of talents. Allegra Academy offered ten master classes - by prof. Boris Garlitsky, prof. Valery Sokolov, prof. Albena Danailova (violin), prof. Oÿkü Canpolat - Rast and prof. Simone Gramaglia (viola), prof. Eckart Runge and prof. Konstantin Heidrich (cello), prof. Jacques Amon (piano), prof. Johannes Schlaefli and prof. Nicholas Pasquet (orchestral conducting).

The festival programme was magnificent! Albena Danailova and Valery Sokolov’s virtuoso performances with the Allegra Festival Orchestra. A gentle nod towards jazz and an immersion in the lights and shadows of the 1920’s with Duo Runge and Amon. The pure joy of the The Allegra Faculty crème de la crème performance of Bruch String Octet. The ever so emotional concert of The Next Generation Orchestra, followed by the joint orchestra of the Sofia Youth Philharmonic and the Winterthur Conservatory in Switzerland with their youthful drive and enthusiasm.

2023

Taking Sofia by storm!

In its 9th consecutive year the Allegra Festival conquered new audiences in Sofia and enriched its programme with stellar concerts and virtuoso soloists.
The Academy offered young musicians from around the globe 9 master classes under the expert guidance of the professors Boris Garlitsky and Nimrod Guez (violin), Wilfried Strehle (viola), Kyril Zlotnikov and Giovanni Gnocchi (cello & chamber music), as well as the leading professors in orchestra conducting - Johannes Schlaefli and Nicolás Pasquet.

Like every year the academic programme merged into a very exciting edition of the Allegra Festival with 6 concerts among which the most emotional was the one by the New Generation Orchestra and their prof. Boris Gralitsky - both as conductor and soloist.

The festival stage brought together Julia Becker (first concertmaster of Tonhalle Zurich), Wilfied Strehle, Petar Naydenov, Lázsló Fenyö, Giovanni Gnocchi, Kyril Zlotnikov, Alessandro D’Amico, as well as the young Bulgarian talents Lora Markova, Syon Najman and Elizabeth Gekova. We will long remember the concert of the Allegra Festival Orchestra and the Ukrainian virtuoso Valeriy Sokolov with his exceptional performance of Tchaikovsky.

2022

Sofia - the new beginning!

Allegra’s growth both nationally and internationally has led to the decision to move the festival to the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia.

Within its eighth season, Allegra Academy hosted ten master classes with world-class teachers. Our guests were the violinists Prof. Boris Garlitsky, Prof. Sebastian Hamann, Prof. Sergey Malov, and Gregory Ahss; violists Prof. Wilfried Strehle and Prof. Nimrod Guez, as well as the cellists Prof. Laszlo Fenyo and Kiril Zlotnikov. The Academy also offered two master classes in orchestral conducting led by some of the leading conductors in the field - Professors Johannes Schlaefli and Nikolas Pasquet. In the spring we held the Allegra Youth Competition for violinists and cellists.

The festival program included two symphony concerts of the Allegra Festival Orchestra, two chamber music recitals, one solo recital, Allegra Youth Competition laureates concert, two academic concerts, as well as a concert of The Next Generation – a youth string orchestra comprised of the best participants in the Academy.

2021

The seventh season of the Allegra Festival and Academy in 2021 confirmed once again our desire to establish the project as an international hotspot for education, network, and a concert program at the highest level.

Allegra’s guests were the concertmasters of the Vienna Philharmonic Mr. Rainer Honeck and Prof. Albena Danailova, Prof. Sebastian Hamann from the University of Music Freiburg, Prof. Svetlin Rusev (online), Prof. Wilfried Strehle - long-time solo violist of the Berlin Philharmonic, and Diang Mei - solo violist of the Munich Philharmonic, Prof. Peter Somodari - solo cellist of the Vienna Philharmonic, and Prof. László Fenyö - Karlsruhe University of Music. The premiere of the Allegra International Competition in 2021, attracted more than 140 applicants from all over the world.

The highlight of the season was the concert of the festival orchestra under the direction of Mr.Rainer Honeck, during which the rest of the Academy’s faculty spontaneously joined the orchestra on stage.

2020

The seventh season of the Allegra Festival and Academy was largely prepared before March 2020. We were extremely happy that the opera star Alexandrina Pendachanska accepted our invitation to join our faculty.

Despite the state of emergency declared in Bulgaria, the team of Allegra Foundation tirelessly continued to work on structuring the concert program, recruitment of applicants for the academy, recruitment of Bulgarian musicians for the VIRTUOSO scholarship and members of OrchestrAMATA.

We were hoping for a favorable development of the epidemiological situation, which would have allowed us to make it possible to conduct the festival as planned. We made travel and accommodation arrangements for the faculty at the academy and the mentors of OrchestrAMATA, and we signed contracts for the technical provisions of the festival.

Unfortunately, the success we are so proud of — welcoming an extremely large number of foreign participants from so many different countries — this year turned out to be the biggest risk for the festival. We took the difficult but the only reasonable decision to postpone the seventh season of Allegra Festival and Academy to 2021.

2019

Since its creation in 2014, the format of the Allegra Festival and Academy has grown as we have been looking for ways to diversify it. In 2019, we launched our new project OrchestrAMATA - an orchestral academy for non-professional musicians who worked under the mentorship of soloists from the three leading Swiss orchestras - Opera Zurich, Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, and Lucerne Symphony Orchestra. This was a realization of our long-standing idea to turn the festival into a cultural attraction tourism to contribute to the local economy. Within a week (a time period sufficient for a rehearsal process of a professional Orchestra) the members of OrchestrAMATA prepared and presented a symphony concert program with great success before the demanding Ruse audience.

New in the sixth edition was the established VIRTUOSO scholarship, financed with funds from the National Culture Fund and the Allegra Foundation, which provided six participants from Bulgaria with both participation in a master class and irreplaceable concert experience in chamber ensembles with our faculty. Proof that our efforts to develop cultural tourism in the city have been appreciated is in the fact that Allegra Festival and Academy was nominated to participate in the Seventh Annual awards of the Municipality of Ruse for an original tourist event. We are extremely happy that we received the unequivocal support from our main partners and sponsors (with their entire teams), friends of the Festival, employees in the hotel and transport services we work with, a big part of the cultural core of the local society, as well as the entire group of the participants and their families in OrchestrAMATA 2019. Apart from that, the vote for this award gave us an opportunity to promote the festival and its success among a very wide range of people.

2018

The annual growth of the project naturally turned its fifth season into a full-fledged two-week festival with a rich academic and concert program.

In parallel with its organization, the Allegra Foundation, with the support of the Municipalities of the cities of Ruse, Razgrad, and Silistra, organized a concert tour of the Academic Orchestra of Bern Conservatory with conductor Druzhelyub Yanakiev and soloists Theodosii Spasov Jazz Trio. Their project “East of the Alps”, intended for a wider diverse audience, was offered to the public in Silistra and Razgrad, as well as presented at an Open Air concert on Freedom Square in Ruse. It became a celebration for the public and an inspiring opening of the festival, which included two concerts of the Allegra Festival Orchestra in Ruse and Razgrad, a jazz concert, a chamber concert, a recital, a sonata evening, Trumpet Day, four final master class concerts, and “Allegra meets China” - part I and part II.

As part of the Allegra Academy, the following master classes were offered:

violin masterclass with Prof. Sebastian Hamann
piano and piano duo with Aglika Genova and Lyuben Dimitrov
violin and chamber music with Xiaoming Wang - concertmaster of Opera Zurich
viola and chamber music with Prof. Shaovu Wang - teacher of viola and member of the Academic Council at the Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing
cello and chamber music with Prof. Peter Somodari and
guitar with Prof. Andreas von Wangenheim.

We are extremely proud of the realization of our long-standing idea - Festival Orchestra Allegra, comprised of the best participants of the academy, with a concertmaster Ekaterina Frolova – member of the Vienna Philharmonic, and under the mentorship of Xiaoming Wang, concertmaster of Opera Zurich, and Prof. Peter Somodari, soloist of Vienna Philharmonic.

2017

The extremely high level of educators sharing the Allegra platform continued to attract more and more young musicians. The engagement of Ruse Philharmonic abroad prevented us from including our traditional conducting orchestra class which attracts a large number of our students. Despite this obstacle, we counted the fourth season of the Academy as another success in its development welcoming 82 participants from 20 countries in the following master classes:

violin with Prof. Sebastian Hamann - University of Music in Freiburg
cello with Prof. Peter Somodari – principal cello of the Vienna Philharmonic
piano duo with Aglika Genova and Lyuben Dimitrov
guitar with Prof. Andreas von Wangenheim
clarinet with Prof. Fabio di Cazzola
choral conducting with Prof. Markus Utz - orchestra and choral conducting faculty at the Zurich University of the Arts, and Prof. Denis Roger - choral conducting faculty at the State College of Music and Fine Arts in Stuttgart.

2016

In 2016, the sustainable development of the project continued, with 74 participants from 22 countries who presented ten concerts. The master classes were in the following areas:

piano duo with Aglika Genova and Lyuben Dimitrov
trumpet with Prof. Wim van Hasselt
orchestra conducting with Prof. Johannes Schlaefli and James Lowe
clarinet with Prof. Fabio di Cazzola - Professor of clarinet and chamber music in Zurich University of the Arts and Artistic Director of the Music Festival for chamber music “Klang”
choral conducting with Prof. Andreas Hermann - Professor at the Munich Music Academy, Artistic Director of the Munich Philharmonic Choir - partner choir of Munich Philharmonic and
guitar with Prof. Andreas von Wangenheim - Professor at Hochschule Lucerne, Switzerland and the University of Music Karlsruhe, Germany.

2015

The second year of ISA Allegra built upon its successful achievement by welcoming 48 participants from 19 countries and offered the audience six concerts. Four master classes were organized:

violin with Prof. Bartek Nizol - concertmaster of Opera Zurich and teacher in Bern University of the Arts
piano duo with the Piano Duo Aglika Genova and Lyuben Dimitrov - one of the most world’s sought-after piano ensembles of our time, permanent members of the jury of major international competitions for piano duos and solo piano, as well as heads of Department of Piano Duo at the Hannover High Academy of Music, theater and media. Our beloved Lyuben Dimitrov is also a graduate of the Ruse Music School
trumpet with Prof. Wim van Hasselt – Professor at the University of Music in Freiburg
orchestra conducting with Prof. Johannes Schlaefli - Professor at the Zurich University of the Arts, and James Loewe - Chief Conductor of the Ensemble for Contemporary Music of Edinburgh, as well as Assistant Conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

2014

n 2014, the International Summer Academy Allegra (ISA Allegra) was launched, created by Petar Naydenov, a graduate of the Ruse Music School, currently residing and working in Switzerland as a lecturer at the Zurich University of the Arts and solo double bass player of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra. ISA Allegra is conceived as a place for professional development and training of young musicians (pupils, students, and young professionals) in an informal environment where the academy provides an exclusive opportunity to work with world-renowned artists and educators. We are extremely fortunate to have had the privilege of working with the brilliant violinist Svetlin Rusev, also a graduate of the Ruse Music School. At its first edition, ISA Allegra welcomed 35 participants from 14 countries who participated in three master classes and offered the Ruse audience four concerts. The master classes were in:

violin with Prof. Svetlin Rusev - then he was a concertmaster of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Radio France and concertmaster of the Seoul Philharmonic, as well as Professor of violin at the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Paris
opera singing with Boyko Tsvetanov - soloist of Opera Zurich, as well as many world opera houses
orchestral conducting by Prof. Johannes Schlaefli – Professor at the Zurich University of the Arts.