The Artissimo Trio is the work of three young and ambitious girls. Bogdana Burin (violin), Kalina Mincheva (violin) and Mihaela Petrova (piano) are still students in the chamber music class of Magdalena Dalcheva at Lubomir Pipkov High School of Music in Sofia. At first, Kalina and Mihaela worked as a sonata duo. Bogdana joined them in 2014 and suggested a name for the trio, Artissimo.

Over the recent months the three girls have been working hard for the Concertino Prague international competition. The five-member jury is going to assess the recordings submitted by contenders. The Bulgarians have applied with Sonatina for Two Violins and Piano by Bohuslav Martinu and Piece for Two Violins and Piano by Dmitri Shostakovich. The outcome of the competition will become known at the end of the month.

Without doubt 20 c. serious music is very sophisticated. Its infinite intonation world has not discouraged the Artissimo Trio. On the contrary, the threesome is keen to play more contemporary serious music. Says Mihaela:

"Our teacher decided to include Sonatina by Bohuslav Martinu in our repertoire on the occasion of his 55th death anniversary, and 2015 also marks his 125th birth anniversary. Working on the sonatina activated our imagination. The first movement of the work reminds me of a toccata, with its sharp sonority and charged with a lot of tension.”

Violinist Kalina points to other challenges that the trio had to deal with performing the sonatina:

"It is not performed often and there are no recordings on the internet. With our teacher we worked very hard to align the stroke of the two violins. When we started work with pianist Mihaela we were confused because the instruments have very different parts. We had not performed such music and we had to work very hard to succeed.“

A raging ocean storm is what violinist Bogdana imagined playing Martinu’s Sonatina with her colleagues. However she says that even in this stormy work, there are episodes that have calm, relaxing sound:

"It is a tough job to convey the emotion in this work. The composer lived in 20 c. and made use of all tools of contemporary serious music. Emotion fluctuates from lightness and joyfulness to anger. This rapid change of emotions makes it hard for the instrumentalists to convey that music properly.”

What about Shostakovich? His work is absolutely different, the girls reply as one. Their favorite part is Prelude which Mihaela describes as a colorful bunch of emotions.

The culmination of Concertino Prague is a traditional summer tour of the Czech Republic made by the winners. Last year Bulgarian flutist Mila Tsankova took part in it. She received an honorary diploma from the competition.

"Mila was very excited after her visit to a big city to play before large audiences and receive a storm of applause,” Bogdana says. “By joining this tour every participant presents his country. If we win, we should like to climb Prague’s Lookout Tower at the Petrin Hill and enjoy the sunset”, the young violinist muses.

English Daniela Konstantinova