#14: An Introduction with Dobrinka Tabakova

In today’s introduction to world premieres at the BBC Proms, I’m with Dobrinka Tabakova. She’s introducing her new orchestral work Timber and Steel, which is premiered by Bramwell Tovey and the BBC Concert Orchestra on Saturday 31st August at 7.30pm, broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, and available afterwards on BBC Sounds.

Dobrinka Tabakova is a composer of ‘exciting, deeply moving’ music (Washington Times), with ‘glowing tonal harmonies and grand, sweeping gestures [which] convey a huge emotional depth’ (The Strad). Her debut profile album String Paths, on ECM Records, was nominated ‘Best Classical Compendium’ at the 2014 Grammys and in 2017 she was appointed composer-in-residence with the BBC Concert Orchestra.

In 2019, it was announced that her Centuries of Meditations for choir and strings is among the PRS Foundation’s 11 best pieces of British orchestral music from the past 25 years. They commented: “Dobrinka’s music is that glorious combination of immediate and complex, that invites audiences to delve deeper into her sound world.” Tabakova’s music has also captured the imagination of film directors (Jean-Luc Godard’s Adieu au langage), dance (Sydney Dance Company/ Rafael Bonachela Anima) and features regularly at international music festivals including Schleswig-Holstein; Moscow Homecoming; Three Choirs, UK; World Sun Songs, Latvia and Dark Music Days, Iceland. Creative programmers like violist/conductor Maxim Rysanov, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, violinists Gidon Kremer and Janine Jansen as well as Irish DJ John Kelly, Orchestra of the Swan and Sorel Organization New York have all championed her music over the past decade.

Currently, she is working on a string quartet which will tour Europe in the coming season and a Concerto for Orchestra as part of her residency with the BBC Concert Orchestra. A second album, devoted to her choral music and performed by Truro Cathedral Choir, together with BBC Concert Orchestra, is out in September 2019 on Regent Records.

For more information visit Dobrinka’s website.

The theme tune is ‘Dusty Rag’ by May Aufderheide. Performed by Joanna Goldstein for Centaur. This podcast is licensed by PRS for Music (www.prsformusic.com).