Pancho Vladigerov was a Bulgarian composer, pianist, conductor, and music educator. He was born in Zurich to Haralan Vladigerov, a Bulgarian lawyer, and Eliza Pasternak, a physician who had emigrated from Odesa. He spent his childhood in Shumen, Bulgaria.
From 1912 to 1921, Vladigerov studied piano and composition in Berlin with Paul Juon, Georg Schumann, Leonid Kreutzer, and Friedrich Gernsheim, at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik and the German Academy of Arts. His studies were interrupted from 1918 to 1920, when he gave concerts.
From 1920, he worked as a pianist and composer for director Max Reinhardt. Vladigerov gained recognition across Europe as a pianist during the 1920s through extensive touring and recordings. He often performed his own works in concert, helping to bring his music to a wider audience.
Vladigerov returned to Bulgaria in 1932 and settled in Sofia, where he taught at the conservatory and became a professor in 1940. The conservatory was named after him following his death. His works include an opera, a ballet, a symphony, five piano concertos, and numerous arrangements and adaptations of folk songs.