Communism did for Bulgarian composer, pianist and architect Dimitar Nenov (1901-1953). From 1944, this educated, well-travelled polymath with a dangerously aristocratic lineage was effectively silenced, his music condemned as “influenced by western modernism” and many of his scores burnt and recordings destroyed. Now his fellow Bulgarian Ivo Varbanov has resurrected his sprawling, unpublished 1936 piano concerto and his 1942 Ballade No 2 for this revelatory first commercial recording. The monumental concerto is a highly-strung, emotional, single-movement journey, combining a late Romantic sensibility with a uniquely daring modernism, while the Ballade moves from pastoral idyll to climactic frenzy, with boisterous Bulgarian dance influences along the way.
