In the era of Romanticism, there is hardly any other Russian composer who is more associated with western European aesthetics than Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, a composer known for his symphonic and instrumental works, ballets, and operas. Although several of his more than a hundred songs are quite famous, they are rarely performed in vocal recitals. Bulgarian musicians Nadia Krasteva, mezzo soprano, and Dora Deliyska, piano exemplify Tchaikovskyâs creativity and personal life with selected songs featured on their new album None but the Lonely Heart. Not least due to their own Slavic descent, the artists succeed brilliantly in portraying such powerful emotions of melancholy, aspiration and sorrow, but also reconciliation and joy.
Dora Deliyska began piano lessons at the age of five. Surrounded by music in her family, she held her first concert at the age of nine. After musical training in her home city Pleven, Bulgaria, she attended the University of Music and the Performing Arts in Vienna, where she was taught by Professors Jürg von Vintschger and Stefan Vladar. In 2010, she graduated with a Masterâs degree there in the class of Prof. Noel Flores. The same year, she obtained the postgraduate diploma at the Oxana Yablonskaya Piano Institute in Castelnuovo di Garfagnana, Tuscany, Italy. Her artistic development has been strongly influenced by master classes and individual lessons with renowned musicians such as Dmitri Alexejew, Mikhail Voskresensky, Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Boris Bloch and others. Due to her many recordings of works by Franz Liszt (Gramola 98853, 98899, 98931), she is considered one of the most important Liszt interpreters of the young generation. But not only this has aroused the interest of the public: her Schubert CD released in 2013 (Gramola 98969) was awarded the âSupersonic Awardâ by the classical music magazine Pizzicato.