Zhelyo Todorov, a second-semester Bachelor’s student in Prof. Denys Proshayev’s class, has won the ‘Absolute 1st Prize’ and a diploma in the Advanced B – Piano category (age group 19–20) at the Fanny Mendelssohn International Online Competition.
Zhelyo Todorov was born in 2006 in the city of Varna, Bulgaria. There, he began taking lessons at the Dobri Hristov State Music Conservatory in 2013. He won his first competition at the age of 9 and made his debut with an orchestra at the age of 15, performing the first half of Camille Saint-Saëns’s Second Piano Concerto. At the age of 17, he won a Bechstein concert grand piano and also took first prize at the “Orbetello Piano” competition for pianists (Italy). In January 2026, he performed Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with the Varna Opera and Ballet Orchestra. He initially studied with Alexander Konstantinov and is now in his second semester of a Bachelor’s degree in Karlsruhe in the class of Prof. Denys Proshayev.