The Requiem setback and the plan for the 1971–1972 season

Before the new chapter the book quotes one more tribute – from Prof. G. Dimitrov, who felt that at the 5th May Choral Festival the chamber choir under Marin Chonev reached even greater heights, with interpretations born of a deep feeling for the music and the text. He wished the ensemble to go on serving choral culture “so devotedly and so lovingly”.

In the summer of 1971 the choir prepared a concert for the Varna Summer International Music Festival, at which Cherubini’s Requiem was to be heard for the first time in Bulgaria, with the Varna Symphony Orchestra under the Italian conductor Piero Adorno. Chonev was away ill for a long time, and the work was taught by his assistant Dimitar Demirov. Meanwhile the choir had public duties too: on 17 June it sang at the city’s pre-election assembly in the Palace of Culture and Sports before G. Traykov, Academician Todor Pavlov, Todor Stoychev and other party leaders, and the municipal council forbade the ensembles to break up before 2 August, the date of a celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Buzludzha congress.

Adorno arrived on 10 July, attended the last rehearsal with Demirov and had only minor remarks; two joint rehearsals with the orchestra followed. The concert took place on Thursday 15 July 1971 at the Stoyan Bachvarov Drama Theatre. And then something most unwelcome happened: for the first time in its fifteen years the choir gave an unsuccessful concert. The author admits it was hard on Demirov and on the singers, but sees the “flop” as a timely warning against complacency. The concert of 2 August before party leaders of the city and district, for which the choir prepared seriously, made a strong impression, and the singers then went on holiday until 15 September.

In the autumn rehearsals were led by Demirov and the accompanist Petar Vitanov; rumours that the former would move to Plovdiv and the latter to the Choral Chapel in Sofia proved false. Attendance fell by half, but on 8 October the hall was full again – the singers had learned that Chonev would be rehearsing. He set out the tasks for 1971–1972: a concert of its own in Varna in December with the Requiem with piano and a programme by the chamber choir; a Radio Sofia recording of the Requiem for an LP and a concert in Bulgaria Hall; the Requiem again at the May Choral Festival; a full concert of its own in Varna in June 1972 – since founding the festival the choir had dropped its traditional concerts – and a tour abroad, most likely to Odesa, Debrecen, Novi Sad or Vilnius.

The insistence on the Requiem was deliberate. After the failure at Varna Summer ’71 the singers had to regain their confidence and prove that they could still perform cantatas and oratorios, as they once had Schumann’s “Manfred”, Aram Berberyan’s “Song of Freedom”, Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy and Todor Popov’s “Invasion”. They also wanted to refute Rozmari Statelova, who in her review of the 15 July concert called the Requiem an experiment with no place at such a festival; afterwards even the Varna Symphony Orchestra left the choir out of its programme. Chonev, however, found the choir weakened and out of touch with its conductor – hard work lay ahead once more.