Kosta Kolev akordeon

Petrunino horo
Haydushko horo
Trite pûti
Tants s lûzhitsi
Brigadirsko horo
Bezhanarsko horo

Shablenska sborenka
Iztûrsi kaltsi
Paydushko
Kotlenska rûchenitsa
Velingradsko horo
Mlekarevsko horo

Any lover of folk music listening to the melodies recorded in the present album would hardly need to be introduced to their performer in great detail. Kosta Kolev is well known as an accordeonist all over Bulgaria. I will hardly succeed in describing fully this folk musician, conductor, and composer.

Kosta Kolev's biography is too long and too rich. I do not speak of the biography of the man or of his creative biography, because he has always been living with music ever since he remembers himself. The story of his rise as a musician must begin with his unforgettable songs and playings at weddings and many other celebrations and occasions in his native village of Korten, the district of Sliven. But they are not only recollections. The wealth of enchanting sounds and delightful melodies is a source of his creative impulsiveness up to the present. When Kosta Kolev joined the Bulgarian Radio as a leader of the orchestra of national instruments, he often returned to his native village, wrote down in notes old melodies and played them on the accordeon, he also adapted them for the folk orchestra. This has been going on for two decades and the circle of the old musicians with whom Kosta Kolev works is too wide.

Kosta Kolev is one of the few educated musicians who hasn't even for a moment deviated from the folk music. For nearly twenty years he has been leading the orchestra of the Ensemble for Folk Songs at the Committee Television and Radio -- the only orchestra in our country for folk music in classical style. Thousands of adaptions of Folk songs from all over Bulgaria belong to Kosta Kolev. He also has his own compositions on national basis.

The music of folk ring dances and rûchenitsas from almost all Bulgarian folklore regions are recorded on the present album. After having heard them, the listener is under the impression not only of the tuneful distinctive features, the rhythmical diversity -- elements instilled in different ways in Thrace, Dobrudzha, the district of Pirin mountain, the territory along the Danube river and Strandzha mountain. Kosta Kolev keeps and emphasises the originality and specific features of the authentic melody and on that basis desplays, in his own style of performance, his skill of a great master of the accordeon. – Borislav Gerontiev