Dobrinka Tabakova

Growing up in London, Dobrinka Tabakova attended Alleyn's School and the Royal Academy of Music Junior Department, specialising in piano and composition. By age 14, she had won the Jean-Frederic Perrenoud Prize and Medal at the 4th Vienna International Music Competition with Priere for violin and piano. Dobrinka continued her studies for BMus and MMus (composition and conducting) at the Guildhall School with Simon Bainbridge, Robert Saxton, Andrew Schultz, Diana Burrell and Alan Hazeldine. There she won the coveted Lutoslawski Composition Prize and graduated with distinction. She was appointed Composition Fellow at the conservatoire. Currently Dobrinka is studying with Robert Keeley for a PhD in composition at King's College London.

Concerts in the UK include performance of her orchestral piece Thrace at the Barbican, performances at the Cheltenham International Festival of Music, Bath Festival and Purcell Room. Dobrinka's music has been broadcast and performed in her native Bulgaria and has received performances around Europe. In 2001 she represented British composers at the Paris Conservatoire International Composition Festival. In 2002 her prize-winning anthem Praise was sung at St. Paul's Cathedral, London in a concert to commemorate H.M. the Queen's Golden Jubilee.

Commissions include a chamber opera, Midsummer Magic, a work for the Moscow 'Homecoming' Festival 2003 and the Concerto for Viola and Strings 'The Song of the Enchanting Viola'

Commissions and Performances
Bell Tower in the Clouds - 2004
31 January 2005: Civic Hall, Stratford-upon-Avon (world premiere)
1 February 2005: Pittville Pump Room, Cheltenham

Sonnets on Sundry Notes of Music - 2006
7 April 2006: Kingsley College Theatre, Redditch (world premiere)

Bell Tower in the Clouds
This summer, whilst walking in the Dolomites, I came across a small village on a Sunday. It was noon and the service had just finished. The bells of the church started to ring, and it was the most fascinating sound I had heard bells make. In general, ringing sounds easily impress me, and in particular bells, but the space where the Dolomite bells were resonating was rather compact and the sound bounced off old stone houses to become powerful clusters that lingered on. This is where the inspiration for this Orchestra of the Swan commission came from. In order to create a multi dimensional sound, there is a string quartet, which is presented in almost a concerto grosso way against the cluster chords of the body of the orchestra. This was also a decision I made after being told that the new piece would be programmed with Sir Michael Tippett's Concerto for Double Orchestra.
Dobrinka Tabakova

Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music
2006 marks the 390th year since Shakespeare's death, and it seemed fitting to celebrate his work with the Orchestra of the Swan who are based in his home town- Stratford-upon- Avon.

I was most keen to set some of the sonnets for soprano and orchestra, and in the end settled on some lesser-known poems, which make up the second part to The Passionate Pilgrim- 'Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music'. There are six of these sonnets, of which I chose three. The last of the poems has a distinct difference in theme half way through so I divided it in half to make four sonnets in total- thus making the composition a cycle of four song settings.
Between each of the four songs there are instrumental interludes, or perhaps small scale overtures, which use the same chorale theme as their base and mix material from the forthcoming song.

The songs themselves have rather differing characters: he first one (a version of which features in Love's Labour's Lost) 'On a day (alack the day!)' tells a story of love at first sight; the second 'Live with me, and be my love' is a celebration of love; the third 'As it fell upon a day' is sorrowful and compares the lover's pain to that of a wounded nightingale and the last 'Words are easy like the wind' tells of good friends and how hard they are to find.
Dobrinka Tabakova

Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music
On a day (alack the day!)
On a day (alack the day!)
Love, whose month was ever May,
Spied a blossom passing fair,
Playing in the wanton air:
Through the velvet leaves the wind,
All unseen, 'gan passage find;
That the lover, sick to death,
Wish'd himself the heaven's breath.
Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow;
Air, would I might triumph so!
But, alas! my hand hath sworn
Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn:
Vow, alack, for youth unmeet,
Youth, so apt to pluck a sweet,
Thou for whom Jove would swear
Juno but an Ethiope were;
And deny himself for Jove,
Turning mortal for thy love.

Live with me, and be my love
Live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
And all the craggy mountains yields.

There will we sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, by whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

There will I make thee a bed of roses,
With a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle.

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Then live with me and be my love.

Love's Answer.
If that the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.

As it fell upon a day
As it fell upon a day
In the merry month of May,
Sitting in a pleasant shade
Which a grove of myrtles made,
Beasts did leap, and birds did sing,
Trees did grow, and plants did spring;
Everything did banish moan,
Save the nightingale alone:
She, poor bird, as all forlorn,
Lean'd her breast up-till a thorn,
And there sung the dolefull'st ditty,
That to hear it was great pity:
Fie, fie, fie, now would she cry;
Teru, teru, by and by:
That to hear her so complain,
Scarce I could from tears refrain;
For her griefs, so lively shown,
Made me think upon mine own.
Ah, thought I, thou mourn'st in vain;
None take pity on thy pain:
Senseless trees, they cannot hear thee;
Ruthless bears, they will not cheer thee.
King Pandion, he is dead;
All thy friends are lapp'd in lead;
All thy fellow-birds do sing,
Careless of thy sorrowing.
Even so, poor bird, like thee,
None alive will pity me.
Whilst as fickle fortune smil'd,
Thou and I were both beguil'd.
Every one that flatters thee
Is no friend in misery.

Words are easy like the wind
Words are easy like the wind;
Faithful friends are hard to find.
Every man will be thy friend,
Whilst thou hast wherewith to spend;
But if store of crowns be scant,
No man will supply thy want.
If that one be prodigal,
Bountiful they will him call:
And with such-like flattering,
'Pity but he were a king.'
If he be addict to vice,
Quickly him they will entice;
If to women he be bent,
They have at commandement:
But if fortune once do frown,
Then farewell his great renown:
They that fawn'd on him before,
Use his company no more.
He that is thy frend indeed,
He will help thee in thy need;
If thou sorrow, he will weep;
If thou wake, he cannot sleep:
Thus of every grief in heart
He with thee doth bear a part.
These are certain signs to know
Faithful friend from flattering foe.