Lazar Nikolov

Lazar Kostov Nikolov, born in Burgas on 26 August 1922, is one of the founding figures of the post-war Bulgarian avant-garde. Together with Konstantin Iliev, he was among the first composers in Eastern Europe to adopt modernism and non-tonal techniques, at a time when the Communist regime imposed highly restrictive aesthetic doctrines, particularly at the start of his career in the late 1940s. As a result, for much of his professional life his work was subject to censorship.

Nikolov completed his training in 1946 at the State Academy of Music of Bulgaria, where he studied piano and composition with Nenov and, briefly, composition with Pancho Vladigerov. Between his graduation and his appointment as lecturer in score reading at the Academy in 1961, he worked as an accompanist. From 1966 to 1969 he served as secretary of the Union of Bulgarian Composers, and he became its president in 1992. His awards include distinctions from the Union itself (1983 and 1984), the Order of the People's Republic of Bulgaria (1982), the title of People's Artist (1984) and an award from the Académie des Beaux-Arts (1992). His works were performed at festivals such as the Warsaw Autumn, the Zagreb Biennale, the Berlin Music Biennale and the Prague Spring.

His early influences included, besides Nenov, Shostakovich, Stravinsky and Hindemith. Like Iliev, he rejected folk sources and the late-Romantic style of Vladigerov, and sought briefer forms and economical, clear and linear means of expression. In early works such as his first two piano sonatas he employed classical forms and polyphony. His Concerto for String Orchestra (1949) was his first successful composition and marked the beginning of a personal and evolving style. After its premiere, the authorities criticised it harshly, but it soon gained great popularity and today it is one of his best-known pieces. In the 1960s he experimented with instrumental timbre, controlled aleatoric elements and highly virtuosic techniques, as seen in his First String Quartet (1964–1965) and in Pianistichni otblyasatsi (Piano Reflections, 1972).

The sonata occupies a prominent place in his catalogue, as he cultivated the form regularly. His piano sonatas, composed between 1950 and 1991, document the successive stages of his style. In the later ones, Nikolov makes extensive use of aleatoricism, note clusters, glissandi across the strings and other colouristic effects, although the freer sections are subject to detailed instructions for the performer.

Nikolov is today regarded as one of the composers who renewed Bulgarian music after the Second World War. His catalogue, dominated by instrumental music, allows the evolution of the avant-garde in the Eastern Bloc to be traced over several decades.