Petandûr Ralchev – akordeon

Pravoslavensko horo
Shopska syuita
Ivaylovsko horo
Milarovska rûchenitsa
Poibrensko horo

Kontsertno horo
Bûrza rûchenitsa
Plovdivsko horo i Prodanovo horo
Dobrovnishka rûchenitsa

Petûr Ralchev was born in the village of Poibrene in the Pazardzhik district, but soon after his parents moved to the village of Ivaylo – now in the suburbs of Pazardzhik. Aged five only, he played by ear the first folk melody on the accordion, a melody played to him by his uncle – an amateur musician. His parents enrolled him into a music school and it was there that he began from the very first grade to learn the secrets of the accordion under the guidance of his teacher Kostadin Milarov. Later on he was admitted into the Secondary Music School in Plovdiv in the class of Mihail Mihailov. The years in which he studied classical music proved to be a sound basis, that has influenced his overall development as a musician. At that time his repertoire already included works that established his high performance mastership. In 1977 he was awarded the First Prize at the Young Musician Competition held in Chirpan, while later on at the international Competition in Klingenthal, GDR, he was acknowledged for his performance of a Bulgarian piece.

Petûr Ralchev has been in touch with folk music from his early childhood. In the beginning he played together with his cousin Chavdar Ralchev (also an accordionist), while later on he performed alone. In the Plovdiv Music School at that time there studied another musician – the violinist Georgi Yanev. The two boys quickly found a common language – the language of folk music. At the beginning they played together different popular themes and later on began to compose tunes of their own. This was how the Orpheus Orchestra was set up and Petûr Ralchev has played in it ever since graduating school in 1983. He established a style of his own, which has left its mark on the styles of the different orchestras which he has performed with until now. Petûr Ralchev defined it as: virtuosity, melodiousness, rich harmony, and improvisation. Here I could add – his style is a crystallization of everything that is developing at this moment in the field of contemporary folk music without being in contradiction with the folklore tradition. If I must describe his style more fully, then I must start with the themes – he does not stick to authentic melodies, but creates his own – melodious, but full of virtuosity (an obstacle for all, who try to play them), having a wide range and a variety of timbres, with an enriched, but not overloaded, harmonic language. He managed to achieve great variety in the improvisation, without searching for variants, but rather for an overall construction and development, which proved the 3-minute forms to be inadequate (usually his horos are longer than 4 minutes).

The present recording is his first individual release as a performer, in collaboration with the composer Dimitûr Trifonov. It includes horos and rûchenitsas from his earliest to his newest ones, some of them sounding for the first time in this recording. Interesting quests are carried out in the arrangements, that are specific for the different pieces. The amazing mastership of Petûr Ralchev becomes clear in the accumulation of voices, which he does on his own, achieving a perfect synchronization in the ornamentations as well.

According to me, the present release will be of interest not only to the lovers of instrumental Thracian music (who expect its appearance impatiently), but also to all those who appreciate and follow the new trends in the Bulgarian folk music. – Veselina Kanaleva

Recorded at the National Palace of Culture in February, 1988.