Nayden Todorov
Director of Sophia Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor
Nayden Todorov not only has realized a successful conducting career in the symphonic and music-stage genres, but throughout his artistic career has proved himself with bright ideas and active professional leadership. He has appeared on stages in Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, Romania, Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Turkey, Russia, Israel, Egypt, China, South Korea, and the United States. He is involved in international crossover projects.
He studied orchestral conducting with Uroš Lajovic and Karl Österreicher at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. In 1995 he started as conductor of the orchestras in Vratsa and Vidin, and in 1996 he was invited by the Israeli Leonard Bernstein Foundation to the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem, where he specialized under Mendi Rodan. In 1997 he founded the Thracian Summer Festival in Plovdiv. A year later, he received his first permanent international engagement – in Haifa, Israel, with the North Israel Symphony Orchestra, where he was selected among more than 150 candidates to be the orchestra’s permanent conductor. In the following years, Nayden Todorov appeared on the stages of many of the major cultural centres in Europe, Asia, Africa and America.
He went through the positions of director and conductor of the Plovdiv Opera and Philharmonic. He made his debut at the Sofia Opera in 2002 with Verdi’s
La Traviata (with Darina Takova as Violetta), and months later he made his ballet debut there again with Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. With the Sofia Opera, Nayden Todorov recorded for the Naxos company the ballet Don Quixote by Ludwig Minkus, as well as Rachmaninoff’s operas Aleko, The Miserly Knight and Francesca da Rimini.
In the period 2005 – 2017 Maestro Todorov was the director of the State Opera in Ruse, participating with the ensemble in many prestigious forums in various countries throughout Europe. With the Ruse Symphony Orchestra he recorded several CDs, the last of which is with works by Pancho Vladigerov for the Naxos Company
In 2006 he made his debut with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and conducted the concerts of its tour to the largest cities in Japan. This was followed by debuts at the Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow and at the Vienna Volksoper.
He has a long and intensive artistic career with the Sofia Philharmonic. He made his debut with it in 2001. Subsequently, he has been its Principal Guest Conductor, and since the beginning of 2017 he has been elected its Director. In 2005 Nayden Todorov received his first Crystal Lyre for his performance with the Sofia Philharmonic of Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony. For the promotion of Bulgarian music he received the Golden Stave Award of the Union of Bulgarian Composers, and later the Golden Book Award, Plaque of the President of the Republic of Bulgaria, etc.
Together with the Sofia Philharmonic he made his debut at the UNESCO Hall in Paris and at the Bolshoi Theatre Hall in Moscow. In early 2018 he also conducted the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra at the concert opening the Bulgarian Presidency of the European Council in the BOZAR Hall.
In 2019 with the Sofia Philharmonic, he made his debut in the Golden Hall of the Musikverein – Vienna. He has worked with some of the world’s most distinguished singers and instrumentalists, such as Raina Kabaivanska, Angela Gheorghiou, Sonya Yoncheva, Plácido Domingo, Vesselina Katsarova and Paul Badura-Škoda, Yuri Bashmet, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Sarah Chang, Maxim Vengerov, Vadim Repin, Julian Rachlin, Gidon Kremer, Midori, Joshua Bell, Ivo Pogorelich, Martha Argerich, etc.
Since 2018, as part of the educational policy of the Sofia Philharmonic, Nayden Todorov became the host of the classical music programme of the Bulgarian National Television – „In Concert with BNT 2”.
In 2019, for his concerts with the Sofia Philharmonic, Nayden Todorov was voted „Musician of the Year” for the second time by the listeners of the Bulgarian National Radio.
In 2021, he published his first book of short stories, „A Whiff of Angels”.
In October 2022, Nayden Todorov got re-elected for another tenure as a Director of Sofia Philharmonic. As of February 2023 he has been appointed Minister of Culture in the caretaker government.