Mesru Mehmedov

Mesru Mehmedov was a Bulgarian conductor, born on February 4, 1935 in Veliko Tarnovo, died in a plane crash near Zurich on January 18, 1971. He graduated from high school in Dryanovo, where he founded and conducted the school choir and orchestra. In 1955, the group he led reached the finals of the Youth Music Festival in Sofia.

He continued his studies at the Leningrad Conservatory, where his teachers were the great Russian music pedagogues and conductors Prof. Ilya Musin and Prof. Evgeniy Mravinsky. He graduated in 1960 and after his return to Bulgaria he was appointed to the Symphony Orchestra in Plovdiv, initially as assistant conductor, later as chief conductor of the orchestra. Between 1963 and 1969, he conducted the choir of the Plovdiv Singing Society, while also being a guest conductor of other symphony orchestras in Bulgaria and abroad: Czechoslovakia, Monaco, Japan, Uruguay, Great Britain, Italy, France.

Mehmedov's repertoire includes more than a hundred classical musical works, such as the operas "Faust" by Gounod, "Carmen" by Bizet, "Eugene Onegin" by Tchaikovsky, "The Black Domino" by Auber, "The Tsar's Bride" by Rimsky-Korsakov, "Rigoletto" by Verdi and others, as well as many symphonic works.

In 1965, Mehmedov gave concerts in Prague and Brno with performances of Symphony No. 1 by Johannes Brahms and "Requiem" by Giuseppe Verdi. In the same year, he was awarded second prize at the "Nikolai Malko" International Conducting Competition in Copenhagen.

In 1969, Mehmedov participated in the traditional Dimitri Mitropoulos International Conducting Festival in New York. With Tchaikovsky's fantasy Francesca di Rimini, he won first place in the competition, chaired by Leonard Bernstein, who invited him to be his assistant.

After returning to Bulgaria, Mehmedov received recognition from the Bulgarian musical community and was appointed director of the Sofia Philharmonic. He stayed there for a short time, as he also conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Philharmonic.

On January 18, 1971, at the height of his fame, Mesru Mehmedov died in a plane crash in Zurich, Switzerland.