Biography (read more)
Ludmil Angelov was born on 27 June 1961 in Varna, into a musical family: his father was the conductor Mikhail Angelov and his mother the opera singer Maria Dimitrova. He began piano lessons at six and studied at the Lyubomir Pipkov National Music School in Sofia with Konstantin Stankovich, Victoria Spasova and Lyudmila Stoyanova, before completing his training in the piano department of the Pancho Vladigerov National Music Academy.
He competed from childhood, taking first prize at the Svetoslav Obretenov competition in 1972 and a distinction at the Keyboard Virtuosi competition in Prague the following year. Later successes included first place at the Senigallia competition, a special prize at the Frédéric Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1985 — where he was the first Bulgarian laureate — a prize at the international piano competition in Palm Beach in 1990, and the Grand Prize at the Piano Masters competition in Monte Carlo.
He appeared at Lincoln Center in New York in 1990, and in 1992 moved to Toledo in Spain to teach at the conservatory there. In 1996 he founded the Toledo International Music Festival. He has been an honorary professor at New Bulgarian University since June 2011 and gives annual masterclasses at Sofia University.
Angelov’s central association is with Chopin. His special prize at the Warsaw competition in 1985 made him the first Bulgarian to be named a laureate there, which fixed both his repertoire and his standing at home; the Polish state later recognised that work with the Gloria Artis medal in 2011.
His career has been unusual in combining performance with institution-building abroad. Settling in Toledo in 1992 and founding its international music festival four years later gave him a permanent platform in Spain, and the festival has outlasted the individual engagements that first took him there.
In Bulgaria he has remained a public figure and a teacher, holding an honorary professorship at New Bulgarian University and returning each year for masterclasses. He was awarded the Varna Grand Prize in 2015 and made an honorary citizen of Sofia on 17 September 2022.
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