Plamena Mangova

Born in Bulgaria in 1980, pianist Plamena Mangova’s career was launched with a true kettledrum roll when she not only won Second Prize at the Queen Elizabeth International Competition in Brussels, but also a “Diapason d’Or of the Year” in France for her first CD release. She had studied at the State Music Academy in Sofia under Marina Kapatsinskaya, with Dmitri Bashkirov at the Reina Sofia Academy in Madrid and with Abdel-Rahman El Bacha at the Chapelle Musicale in Brussels, while garnering further important counsel in masterclasses imparted by outstanding musicians such as Leon Fleisher, Krystian Zimerman and Sir András Schiff. She has proven her capabilities as a solo concerto performer with orchestras such as the BBC Philharmonic, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the English Chamber Orchestra, Saint Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, MDR RSO Leipzig and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, under conductors including Sir Colin Davis, Myung-Whun Chung, Dmitri Jurowski, Karl Heinz Steffens and François-Xavier Roth. She has been invited to perform in outstanding venues: the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Munich Herkulessaal, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. 2017 marked the year in which Plamena Mangova gave her first performance at the Ruhr Piano Festival.