Emil Tabakov graduated from the Bulgarian State Music Academy in conducting and double-bass in 1974 and received his diploma in composition in 1978. He worked as conductor of the Ruse Philharmonic between the years 1976 and 1979. From 1979 to 1987 he was the music director and conductor of the Sofia Soloists Chamber Orchestra. He was appointed conductor of the Sofia Philharmonic in 1985 where he continued until 2000 first as principal conductor then as music director and conductor. During the same period Tabakov worked as the music director and conductor of the Belgrade Philharmonic. Starting in 1999, he was the artistic director of the New Year’s Music Festival in Sofia for six years. Tabakov served as Minister of Culture for Bulgaria in 1997. Emil Tabakov was music director of the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra between 2002 and 2008.

Emil Tabakov is a standing guest conductor of the Orchestre National de France, Orchestre de Avignon, Orchestre de Metz, and the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra. He has conducted orchestras in Russia, America, Australia, Japan and Israel, as well as all over Europe.

Emil Tabakov has composed works of different genres, ranging from chamber music to ballet. He has been awarded prizes by the Union of Bulgarian Composers for many of his compositions. Albums recorded under his baton exceed 40. He has conducted the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra in numerous recordings in a variety of styles, such as all the symphonies of Mahler and Scriabin, the complete orchestral works of Brahms and the piano concertos of Beethoven. He has recorded a total of eleven albums with the Sofia Soloists Chamber Orchestra covering many composers from Handel to Schoenberg. Tabakov has won many prizes in international competitions in double-bass and conducting and furthermore was honoured as “Man of the Year” by the International Biographical Center in England in 1991.

Born at Kaliště in Bohemia, the son of a Jewish pedlar, Gustav Mahler later described himself as three times homeless: a Bohemian in Austria, an Austrian among Germans, and a Jew throughout the world – everywhere an intruder, never welcomed. His principal musical training was at the Vienna Conservatory, after which he embarked on a career as a conductor which took him to important positions in Budapest, Hamburg, and finally the Vienna Court Opera, where he made a number of major reforms. Hostility fomented by sections of the press forced his resignation in 1907, after which he briefly continued a distinguished international career as a conductor, notably in New York, until his death in 1911. As a composer Mahler wrote symphonies that absorbed into their texture and form the tradition of German song, the music reflecting the spirit of the time in which he lived, in all its variety.

Orchestral Music
Mahler completed nine symphonies (leaving a 10th unfinished) in addition to Das Lied von der Erde (‘The Song of the Earth’), a symphony in all but name which comprises settings of a series of poems from Bethge’s Die chinesische Flöte. The first of the symphonies, sometimes known as ‘Titan’, includes a remarkable ironic funeral march that transforms a nursery tune; Nos 2, 3, 4 and 8 make use of voices, the last of these on a massive scale. All the symphonies, in their variety of mood, offer a reflection of the world through music that may occasionally be garish and yet often reaches unsurpassable heights.

Vocal Music
In addition to the vocal element in his symphonies, Mahler wrote songs of singular beauty. They include settings of poems from the Romantic anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (‘The Boy’s Magic Horn’), Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (‘Songs of a Wayfarer’), and Rückert’s Kindertotenlieder (‘Songs of the Death of Children’).