site.btaVasko Abadjiev and the Magic of the Violin

Born 98 years ago today, Vasil (Vasko) Abadjiev was a virtuoso violinist whose talent and work won him a worldwide fame and the veneration of music lovers.

Abadijev was born in Sofia on January 14, 1926 , in a family with rich musical tradition. His father, Nikola Abadjiev, was a violin professor at the National Academy of Music in Sofia and his mother, Lala Piperova, was a pianist. A child prodigy, he became publicly known at very early age as Vasko. At the age of six, he played in Vienna before the jury of the first international competition in violin (1932) and became the sensation of the contest. At the age of 7 he was already performing his own compositions – before the great French violinist and teacher Jacques Thibaud.

At the age of nine, he graduated from the National Academy of Music, General Department, becoming the youngest ever higher school graduate in Bulgaria.

In 1936 he left for Brussels with his parents. At 13 years old he graduated from the Brussels conservatoire with the highest distinction, and commenced a concert tour around Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Denmark and Sweden. He attended Prof. Albert Zimmer's master class at the Brussels Conservatoire and later studied piano and composing at the Berlin Conservatoire.

His talent was noted wherever he performed. In 1937 he was praised by the jury of the Eugène Ysaÿe Competition in Brussels, where he participated as “unofficial competitor”, because of his age. HM Queen Elisabeth of Belgium had just set up the competition, which now bears her name.

In May 1938 he was awarded the First Prize and gold medal at the VI International violin competition in Liège. He received the first prize of the Brussels conservatoire and a gold medal from King Leopold III.

At the beginning of World War II, the Abadjiev family settled in Berlin, where Vasko perfected playing the violin and piano, composition, and counterpoint. He gave concerts under the baton of the greatest conductors of the 20th century, including Wilhelm Furtwängler, Karl Böhm and Willem Mengelberg, and played in numerous ensembles for chamber music or solo concerts.

He was widely recognised as a unique talent and invitations were pouring for stints in the most famous music centers in Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Switzerland, and Austria. He would perform the violin concertos of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Paganini, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Tchaikovsky. His performances invariably earned the praise of the audiences, experts and the press. His performances were marked with such artistry, inspiration and musical sensitivity, that violin virtuoso Yehudi Menuhin would say, "Vasko Abadjiev plays divinely! You Bulgarians should be proud of him!"

From 1952 to 1956 he lived with his mother (his father died in 1947) almost exclusively in Bulgaria, where he gave many concerts and recitals. Welcomed triumphantly everywhere as a phenomenal violinist, he performed with the philharmonic orchestras in Sofia, Plovdiv, Ruse, and many other towns. In the year 1952 he was honoured with the highest distinction for culture in Bulgaria, the Dimitrov Award, 1st Degree. He moved to what was then Western Germany with his mother after 1956. Such an act meant a refusal to be part of the cultural space of communist Bulgaria. For that, the authorities in Sofia declared him "a traitor of the motherland" In 1963. The communist-era State Security Service opened a file for him.

After the death of his mother in 1965, his personal life took a sad and tragic turn. Since his childhood Abadjiev had extremely sensitive mentality and was focused almost entirely on music – a kind of self-imposed isolation. He did not start a family. He did not produce any offspring, nor a group of followers or students. He never read reviews, avoided interviews (he scarcely ever gave any), did not enjoy being photographed.

Few details are known about his last years. Abadjiev was involved in a car accident, suffered from illnesses, financial problems, depressions and loneliness. On December 14, 1978 he was found dead in a train at the Hamburg railway station, lonely and forgotten.

His unique contribution to classical music were sent to oblivion in his homeland. The communist authorities made a dedicated effort to delete his talent and work from the collective memory of the nation. Recordings of his performances were banned on the radio and his Bulgarian-produced records were destroyed. Books where his name was mentioned were banned and subsequently seized from libraries.

Universal recognition of Abadjiev as a musical phenomenon made him a citizen of the world. He could live comfortably and perform anywhere as non-Bulgarian citizen - and yet until his last day he kept his Bulgarian passport. He refused to accept foreign citizenship offered to him by Queen Elizabeth I of Belgium in 1939 and later on by the German government during the war, or by other European governments.

Some of Abadjiev's performances and records are now kept in the Golden Fund of the Bulgarian National Radio. 

His impressive concert repertoire included works by Corelli, Tartini, Bach, Sarasate, Paganini, Brahms, Wieniawskii. Vasko Abadjiev composed approximately 60 opuses – solo and chamber works – string quartets, violin sonatas, piano pieces, capriccios for solo violin.