Biography
Bulgarian violinist Zefira Valova is a leading specialist in early music, who performs as a soloist, leader, concertmaster or chamber musician, and also champions early music repertoire in her home country. In 2022 – 2023 she leads Il Pomo d’Oro in concerts with countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński, with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and her recital programme Eden in Europe and USA.
Among her CD releases are Violin concertos from the late 18th century with Il Pomo d’Oro for Aparte, two albums as conductor in arias by Vinci and Handel with Franco Fagioli (Deutsche Grammophon), Schubert sonatas with Aapo Hakkinen.
Since 2006 she is the artistic director of Sofia Baroque Arts Festival dedicated to present rare chamber repertoire and create links between local musicinas and their colleagues from abroad.
She is a guest concertmaster of the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra with a main focus on Romantic repertoire. She has been concertmaster of the European Union Baroque Orchestra, where she worked with Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Ton Koopman and Enrico Onofri, among others. She has performed and recorded (for Alpha) concertos by Vivaldi and Telemann as a soloist and concertmaster with Les Ambassadeurs, directed by Alexis Kossenko.
In 2020 she won first prize in the José Herrando Baroque Violin Competition. In 2017 she received the Musician of the Year prize for artistic activity by Bulgarian National Radio, as well as the Golden Quill award for culture in 2021.
She led the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra in programmes of 18th-century concertos.
She graduated at Sofia’s National Academy of Music with Yosif Radionov, and with Lucy van Dael at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam.
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