London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama is one of the world's leading conservatoires and drama schools, offering musicians and actors an inspiring environment in which to develop as artists and professionals. With the passage of the years it has developed into a veritable cosmopolitan cultural hub, attracting talents form all parts of the globe.

One of them is violinist Todor Nikolaev. In 2000, he won a scholarship to study there, which opened up opportunities many of his colleagues could only have dreamed of. He obtained his bachelor’s and then master’s degree with Prof. Ifrah Neeman – one of the foremost violin pedagogues of the 20^th century.

“He taught us to play the violin, but he also moulded us as individuals and opened up new vistas for us,” Todor Nikoalev says. “Besides music, he wanted each and every one of us to develop an interest in theatre, opera, to get to know people of all walks of life. He would always endeavour to show us that the world is a much bigger place than most of us think. I am truly lucky to have been able to come in contact with his world and his way of teaching.”

Before he started his studies, Todor Nikolaev met with one of the most unorthodox violinists of the past twenty years – Nigel Kennedy. Impressed by the talent of his young colleague, he invited Todor to take part in his concert at the National Palace of Culture in Sofia.

“He is so intelligent, as a human being and as a musician. His guiding principle in life is discipline – he gets up early every morning to jog and plays the violin at least five hours a day. He says that if you don’t do that regularly you lose all self-respect in which case you cannot expect other people to respect you. He is open to all kinds of music and art. To my mind, the fact that he presents a different kind of image from everyone else shifts the focus away from his talent. What really matters though is what the audience will hear and not whether Nigel Kennedy has red or green shoes on while he is playing.”

Todor Nikolaev says he cannot understand musicians who do not want to include all styles of the serious genre in their repertoire. “Unless one draws on different periods of art music, one can never expect to develop fully as a performer,” he says.

In Great Britain Todor Nikolaev works as a lecturer at different educational establishments, but still finds time for concerts in Bulgaria. At the beginning of April he went to London to take part in a Bach Pillow Concert targeted at the youngest audience. Here is what the violinist says about what lecturing means to him:

“It teaches one to be very patient – it is so different from what it takes to organize a concert. I work with children, with teenagers and adults and I have to keep in mind that each person has a different rate of acquiring knowledge. This kind of work takes me back in time to my childhood when I was taking my first steps with the violin. It is great to see how quickly children of different nationalities learn.”

Th audio contains the following works:

-  Fragment from Part 1 of Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra by Mozart;

-  Fragment from Part 2 of Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra by Mozart;

-  Part 3 of Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra by Mozart, all of the fragments are performed by Todor Nikolaev, Maria Lyubenova, viola with the Orpheus orchestra, conductor Raicho Hristov.

English version: Milena Daynova