site.btaBulgarian Composer Jivka Klinkova Born 100 Years Ago: Far Better Known Abroad than at Home

Tuesday marks the 100th birth anniversary of noted Bulgarian composer and conductor Jivka Klinkova (1924-2002), who is far better known abroad than at home.

Born in Samokov (Southwestern Bulgaria) on July 30, 1924, Klinkova studied piano under Dimitar Nenov, conducting under Edmondo De Vecchi, and composition under Parashkev Hadjiev and Veselin Stoyanov. She graduated from the Bulgarian State Conservatoire in 1947.

She was a conductor and composer at the Philip Koutev State Ensemble for Folk Songs and Dances as from its establishment in 1951 and until 1966. Between 1960 and 1966, Klinkova specialized in composition under Rudolf Wagner-Regeny and Boris Blacher in East Berlin. Until 1989, she worked abroad.

Klinkova wrote eleven ballets, operas, musicals, and works for symphony, string and chamber orchestra, suites and other pieces for folk orchestra. She also takes credit for chamber instrumental music, more than 250 solo and choir songs with piano accompaniment, arrangements of folk songs and dances, and film scores.

Quite a few of her works were performed for the first time abroad, where they met with critical acclaim, including the children's opera Boastful Petko (Berlin, 1960), the ballets Vietnamese Poem (Brno, 1976) and Kaliakra (Usti nad Labem, 1978), and the musical Island of Dreams (Teplice, 1978). 

Klinkova's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra opened the Maria Callas Festival in Athens in 1993. Her works were entered at festivals in Wroclaw, Copenhagen and Darmstadt. 

In the course of 20 years, she worked on an opera oratorio titled Sts Cyril and Methodius. This major oevre was completed in 1980. Pope John Paul II imparted his Apostolic Blessing on the work by a parchment scroll in 1981. At the pontiff's express insistence, the opera, honouring the inventors of the Slavonic script, was performed for the first time during his visit to Bydgoszcz, Poland, in 1986. The original score is kept at the Vatican. The opera oratorio, with a libretto by Venko Markovski, was never staged in Bulgaria until 2021, when it premiered, conducted by Zhorzh Dimitrov, at the Sofia National Opera on May 23 on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the proclamation of Sts Cyril and Methodius as Co-Patrons of Europe alongside St Benedict by Pope John Paul II on December 31, 1980.

A Football Symphony for choir and orchestra that she began in 1993 was recorded with the orchestra of the Prof. Pancho Vladigerov National Academy of Music. Klinkova tried to arrange the performance of the symphony at the closing ceremony for the FIFA World Cup in the US in 1994. Olympic Zest is the title of a rock opera she wrote in 1995 for the opening of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. The opera traces the progress of the Olympic movement since ancient times and to the present day.

Jivka Klinkova died in Sofia on December 23, 2002.

She has received international awards for film score, chamber music and folk adaptations. She is a laureate of the World Festivals of Youth and Students in Bucharest (1953) and Warsaw (1955). The Order of Cyril and Methodius was conferred on her in 1955.

A film about Klinkova, directed by Kamen Kostov, was broadcast on Bulgarian National Television in 1996. The Rila TV channel of her native town Samokov also made a film about the composer, including reminiscences of local people who knew her.