Some time ago this well-known Bulgarian pianist was described as “mature, accomplished, virtuoso piano player with differentiated, richly tinted and deep touch on the instrument”. That is exactly how we saw her and heard her play on March 11 in Bulgaria Hall as a soloist of Sofia Philharmonic on a very special occasion – the 80th anniversary of the birth of her father, the great Bulgarian composer Konstantin Iliev.

Maria, a moving occasion brings you here – the 80th anniversary of the birth of your father, the composer Konstantin Iliev. Tell us about him, about your family.
If he were alive he would be 80 this day, March 9. It is a very lucky fact of my life that I was born in such a family. My father was a great conductor and composer and my mother was a wonderful woman, a physician, Dr. Lilyana Drenska. I had a happy, interesting and enriching childhood. The best one may wish: full of events, concert going, rehearsals. My father was wonderful. Although he rarely had the time to be at home, he treated me from an early age as an equal partner in music conversations. I heard some very complicated works very young. My father enjoyed walking in the open. Every spare hour we were in the Park of Freedom talking about music. My brother was an artist. A prominent young artist, Dimiter Iliev. He died very young.

I grew up in Bulgaria Hall. I spent more time there than at home. Perhaps that is why every appearance on this stage is a peak moment for me. As well as every performance with Sofia Philharmonic. My father did not force my music classes. On the contrary, he told my first piano teacher Bonka Nedkova that he wanted his children to get general musical knowledge and play for pleasure, and by no means become professional musicians. But not everything can be foreseen. At the age of 12, after two hours of weeping before my parents, untypical for me, they understood that I will do this and nothing else. My father believed I would become a musician because I wanted it so much. Not for him, not to please him. So he said: “Okay, I have no choice, I will support you from now on.” So he did. He placed my professional education on professional basis.

Here I must mention a very important person, both in my personal and professional development, Prof. Maria Balsamova, with whom I spent many constructive years of my education as a pianist. She was an exceptional person and pedagogue and I owe her very much. Recently, on February 4, I played in Pleven with conductor Georgi Notev, who is her son and a student of my father.

I was admitted to Sofia State Conservatory but I went to study in East Berlin. I had been there with my father in 1972 when he was touring East Germany. I loved the quality of the orchestras, the intensity of musical life there. So I thought how wonderful it would be if I studied there. Until then I didn’t know a word of German. At home we spoke French because my mother is of French descent. The first thing I had to do was go to the German Language High School.

Despite his intensive work as conductor of Sofia Philharmonic, your father left a large amount of compositions. How did he combine the two?
He usually composed in the summer. In July he sent us to resorts and himself stayed back in Sofia. He worked according to plan and with strict discipline. He got up early in the morning and composed. In his “Fragments” for big orchestra he elaborated his impressions of our stays in the Rhodope Mountains, more specifically the village of Chokmanovo, where we went almost every summer. With typically Bulgarian instrumentation and themes, in alietoric interpretation, they represent avant-garde music with preserved Bulgarian color. He has six more symphonies, the operas “The Boyana Master” and “Deers Kingdom”, countless chamber music works, most of them composed specially for his soloists friends. For example, the Concerto for violin composed for Georgi Badev. My father was a talented writer and he wrote a lot of articles and books. His monograph on Lazar Nikolov is well-known, and his memoirs were published in a book after his death.

As conductor he strongly supported his colleagues, the Bulgarian composers Lazar Nikolov, Vassil Kazandjiev, Ivan Spasov, etc. He often made the first performances of their works. That is the way he saw his prime task as a conductor. He also set works of foreign composers rarely performed in Bulgaria. This is not something that can secure you easy success but for him the idea meant more than practical or material considerations. He was a pioneer, a discoverer.