Emil Tabakov: Complete Symphonies, Volume Three

The music of the Bulgarian composer-conductor Emil Tabakov (b. 1947) explores 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. And 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.

Symphony Orchestra of Bulgarian National Radio
Emil Tabakov, conductor