The Bulgarian Emil Tabakov (b. 1947) follows in the footsteps of such musicians as Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss, being active as both composer and...

The Bulgarian Emil Tabakov (b. 1947) follows in the footsteps of such musicians as Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss, being active as both composer and conductor. Like Mahler, he prefers to write for large forces and now has ten symphonies to his name. Again like Mahler, Tabakov’s symphonies explore the darker side of the human spirit in epic scores as austere as they are powerful. Behind the plain title of Tabakov’s Concert Piece for Orchestra (1985) lurks an extraordinary explosion of violence and anger. The Fourth Symphony (1997) sandwiches a wild Bulgarian dance between two glacial slow movements, the second with an episode of Tchaikovskian lyricism at its centre; the finale is a dark, whirling moto perpetuo- a ride through hell. This is the third volume of a projected series of all ten Tabakov symphonies, most of them receiving their first recordings.