Stoika Milanova Bulgarian violinist Date of Birth: 05.08.1945 Country: Bulgaria

1. Early Life and Education
2. Method and Mentorship
3. International Career
4. Collaborations and Recordings
5. Teaching and Legacy
6. Stoyka Milanova passed away on September 29, 2024, at the age of 79.

Early Life and Education

Stoyka Milanova was born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, on August 5, 1945, to Trendafil Milanov (1909-1999) and his wife, Yovka. Her father, a violinist and violin teacher, was a founding member of the music school in Plovdiv and later became head of the music school in Sofia.

Method and Mentorship

Milanov taught his daughter from the ages of three or four to eighteen. In 1958 and 1981, he published his teaching method, now known as the "Milanov Method," which was partially based on his experience teaching her. She studied violin at the State Music Academy in Sofia and then at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory (1964-1969), where she was a student of David Oistrakh. She won the gold medal at the 8th World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki (1962).

International Career

Milanova placed second at the prestigious Queen Elizabeth International Competition in Brussels (1967), ahead of Gidon Kremer and others. She appeared at the Bath Festival in 1968, performing with Yehudi Menuhin and pianist Clifford Curzon. In 1970, she won the Carl Flesch International Violin Competition in London and made her London recital debut that same year. Throughout the 1970s, she performed as a soloist with major orchestras, initially in Britain and later across Europe. She made her Proms debut in 1971, playing Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sir Colin Davis, and performed at the Proms twice more under Sir Andrew Davis (1972) and James Loughran (1973). She toured Japan with the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra (1975 or 1976) and appeared as a soloist at the Hong Kong Arts Festival (1976). In 1976, she embarked on a highly successful tour of Australia, and she made her debuts in the United States and Canada in 1978. Her performing career reached its height in the 1970s and early 1980s; she continued to perform frequently into the 2000s and was still giving recitals in the mid-to-late 2010s.

Collaborations and Recordings

Her duo partners included pianists Radu Lupu and Malcolm Frager, as well as her sister Dora and, from the 1980s, her daughter, Yoeva, who is also a violinist. A 1971 Bath concert with Lupu featuring Schubert and Franck was described as "superb" by Hugo Cole, who noted, however, that it was Lupu who brought "fresh ideas and emotional depth" to their performance. Anthony Cross described her 1975 performance of Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 in Birmingham as "showing considerable technical wizardry" but "rather marred by a shallow tone." Her violin is the Guarneri del Gesù "Consolo," dated 1733.

Teaching and Legacy

From 2005 to 2010, Milanova taught at the State Conservatory of Venezuela. In 2016, she became a professor and head of the violin department at the State Music Academy (Bulgarian State Conservatory) in Sofia. She has given masterclasses in various European cities, as well as in Venezuela, and has passed on her father's violin teaching method to teachers in Bulgaria and Venezuela. She and Dora Milanova were documented in the short film "The Milanova Sisters" (c. 1975), and in 1988, Milanova was the subject of a Bulgarian film by Andrey Altouparmakov. She was awarded the title "People's Artist" in Bulgaria (1978) and won the Rome's Saggitario D'Oro (1979). According to her biography in Grove's, Milanova is the only Bulgarian violinist mentioned in Margaret Campbell's "The Great Violinists" (1980).

Stoyka Milanova passed away on September 29, 2024, at the age of 79.