Archives West Finding Aid

The first kaval player to be accepted into the Bulgarian State Conservatory, Aleksandr Iliev Eppler's education and experience is part of the lineage of the Thracian School of kaval playing. This school was transmitted to Eppler through his teachers, the legendary Dragan Karapchanski and Nikola Ganchev. He has passed on this inheritance through teaching hundreds of people around the world to play the Bulgarian kaval. Eppler is one of the very few, if not the only, kaval players to have given entire solo concerts, frequently unaccompanied, both in Bulgaria and abroad. He developed a solo repertoire and unique style that could stand up to the demands of the solo kaval concert. Eppler is the only performer of the Bulgarian kaval to play exclusively on the larger, lower-pitched instrument in C, instead of the usual D kaval. He preferred the C kaval because of its greater depth of tone and richness of timbre compared to that of the kaval in D. It should be noted that the higher-pitched D kaval was almost unknown in Thrace before the Soviet arrival in 1944 («9th of September») and the ensuing proliferation of state ensembles. The C kaval was the highest-pitched instrument in use before that time, so that its use by Aleksandr Eppler was a natural, but highly individual decision reflecting his deep love of the old Thracian folklore repertoire. He abandoned the D kaval in his first year in the conservatory for the C kaval, playing everything in transposition, reverting to the D kaval only in certain orchestral or small group settings. All of his concerts since 1971 have been exclusively on the C kaval. During the past four decades Aleksandr Eppler has devoted his time and talents to the radical re-thinking, redesign, and reconstruction of the Bulgarian Thracian kaval. As a virtuoso performer and exponent of Thracian folklore on the Bulgarian kaval, as well as a professional flutemaker, he is in a unique position to approach the instrument's design with a blank slate: keeping all the active, necessary elements of the kaval's character and tone, but greatly improving scale, response, and range.

-- http://www.bulgariankaval.com/