Капка Лалова: „Одисеята на един артист. Композиторката Пенка Кунева“
Kapka Lalova: „An Artist’s Odyssey. Composer Penka Kouneva“

Summary/Abstract: In recent times, apparently under the influence of the dominating role of digital technologies in composing and producing global media music, an increased interest has been witnessed in the achievements of our compatriot Penka Kouneva, who is a highly reputed video game composer in the US and an established author of Hollywood film music and award-winning concept albums on the global market. In this sense, the musicological analyses and generalising theses having been thoroughly revealed for the first time in a philosophically culturological and terminologically faultless manner in the biography by Kapka Lalova (apart from her personal dedication occasioned by Penka Kouneva’s fiftieth anniversary) definitely correspond to the topical contemporary and hybrid problematics. Moreover, her unconventional research approach - a formal identification with the creative impulses and artistic experiences within the compositional style of interpreting the relation of subject and object (which testifies to what the metaphorical borrowing in the book title expresses) has largely been provoked by the empathy and personal experience of the author herself. Let us remind that after settling in Brussels, Kapka Lalova, along with her solo performances as a pianist, has also staged theatrical productions and composed music for New Silent Cinema, Free University of Brussels. It is this approach that presets the post-modernist structural liberty of the exposition, where the text is easily read backwards or in segments, depending on the reader’s interest in certain chapters of the book (which is accompanied by shrewdly selected colour illustrations and archival photos). This does no harm to the general conceptual logic in the portrayal of the artist or the genre distinctiveness of each of the analysed compositions. The most valuable and creative research contributions are, of course, the main compositional principles of Penka Kouneva’s work - most concisely and precisely drawn from concrete analyses of: String Quartet No. 1, the video game Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands and the concept albums A Warrior’s Odyssey, The Woman Astronaut and Rebirth of Id). Kapka Lalova reasonably accentuates the genre of concept album preferred by the composer because of the innermost personal messages of the pieces included in each of the three successive albums, and above all, because of their multilayeredness, which sublimates her fundamental symphonic themed thinking and global crossovers into an incredible stylistic blend. A cogent evidence for this are also the CD recordings selected by Penka Kouneva which the book comes with.

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