“The Music of War was born as spontaneously, as our gathering together as a quartet,” says idea-owner – violinist Ivan Staikov. “We wanted to play onstage Quartet 8 by Shostakovich, but we were worried all the time about the audience’s reaction. Still, this music is for connoisseurs. The work is related to the war subject and we came up with the idea to include it in a project, named Music of War. The quartet was not enough for a whole concert program and our first violinist Sandjar Sapaev suggested to write an entire piece. Its name is War is Coming. Thus he shared his view of the dramatic events in Uzbekistan that he had witnessed. I think that nowadays there is a certain war in relations between people as well. We wanted not only to play good music, but to display the mental anguishes of the survivors. We thank to City Art Fabrics and Atom Theatre. We presented Music of War with the choreography of Stefania Georgieva.”

The creators of the project claim that it is aimed at young people. 120 visited its premiere and in the Night of Theatres it gathered around 150 youngsters at the City Art Workshop. The interior was authentic – the audience had to sit on old tires and benches, while the musicians played in military uniforms.

What is the story behind the Saparev Quartet? It is about students, who gave a helping hand to a colleague in need:

“I found myself in the Students’ Town without knowing a word in Bulgarian and I met Ivan,” Sandjar recalls. “We started to play together with our colleagues. Clarinet player Faraj Akbarov was to be “blamed” for this to some extend. He needed a formation to take his exam with. Later on we enriched our repertoire with different styles. We wondered about the name. The final decision was about my last name, due to its unusualness…”

Radoslav Yordanov – viola and Stanislav Ushinkin – cello are the other two members of the quartet. The musicians tend to share more and more often lately the stage with the Ostava band. Ivan told us about the beginning of their cooperation:

“We’ve known each other with Zhoro – Ostava’s guitar player, for quite a long time. We have often discussed what would happen if rock music could be combined with a string quartet – the miniature representative of the symphony orchestra. At one point the rest of the band also opted for an acoustic live with us and we agreed at once. I will quote respected chamber musician and pedagogue Associate Prof. Nikolay Gagov: “The Sapaev Quartet stands on the line between classical and popular music and there is no other thing like that in Bulgaria.” We are young, but we have enough experience, in order to show our abilities in the serious genre. However, we will continue to create untraditional projects like the one with Ostava.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev