Cellist Zlatomir Fung on his debut recording of opera fantasies

Friday, April 25, 2025

The 2019 International Tchaikovsky Competition cello winner releases his first album

Zlatomir Fung won the Cello category of the 2019 International Tchaikovsky Competition, and also has an enviable collection of other cello awards and prizes to his name. He was a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship Winner in 2022 and was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2020.

His debut recording, ‘Fantasies’, is just out from Signum and on it he explores, with his pianist Richard Fu, a very specific genre, the virtuoso fantasy based on popular operas of the day. And Zlatomir has contributed his own fantasy based on Janáček's Jenůfa.

James Jolly went to talk to him at Henry Wood Hall in London earlier this year just before a rehearsal with the London Philharmonic with whom he was performing a couple of concerts. 

 

To hear other Gramophone podcasts, or to subscribe for free to new editions, search for 'Gramophone' in your Podcast App of choice, or visit Gramophone's page on Apple or Spotify.

You can listen to Zlatomir Fung and Richard Fu's Signum album, 'Fantasies', via Presto Classical, below.

Gramophone Print

  • Print Edition

From £6.67 / month

Subscribe

Gramophone Digital Club

  • Digital Edition
  • Digital Archive
  • Reviews Database
  • Full website access

From £8.75 / month

Subscribe

                              

If you are a library, university or other organisation that would be interested in an institutional subscription to Gramophone please click here for further information.