“Famous abroad, little known at home”: the singers’ letter (1972)

The success in Gorizia was celebrated in Varna, but only by the local press – the musical institutions in the capital stayed silent, and both the conductor and the singers took this as a slight. So the singers sent a letter in their own name to the music desk of a Sofia weekly, which the author reproduces in full. It recalls a summer of intensive preparation: 48 selected singers learned eight songs by Bulgarian composers and one compulsory Italian piece for the 11th Seghizzi International Choral Competition (21–24 September 1972), and on 22 and 24 September Marin Chonev received both first-place cups – in the polyphony and the folklore categories.

The singers describe how their warmest admirers were their rivals, whose conductor told his own choir they would have to work hard and stubbornly “to catch up with them”. At home they were greeted by telegrams from Todor Zhivkov and from Todor Stoychev, first secretary of the regional party committee, and by congratulations from colleagues, musicians and public figures. Thirty days later, however, came the reckoning: the national press had ignored the event altogether, apart from a short note in the newspaper Vecherni Novini.

The letter insists that Morski Zvutsi was the only mixed choir to win two first prizes at an international competition that year – the other first prizes went to children’s and equal-voice choirs, while the mixed choirs received second prizes. The competition was strong: 48 mixed choirs across the two categories, from countries with a rich choral tradition such as Hungary, Romania, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Italy and Yugoslavia. Its importance was clear from the interest of Bulgarian musicians: Samuil Vidas sat on the jury, and Vasil Arnaudov, the composer and conductor Evgeni Cheshmedzhiev, the conductor Hristo Arishtirov and Donka Bozadzhieva of the Central Institute for Amateur Arts attended as guests. The singers quote the joke that the choir was “very famous abroad and little known in Bulgaria”.

As proof they list other appearances from the Italian trip. In Rome the choir sang at the traditional festival of the newspaper L’Unità: in the Olympic Stadium thousands of Italians gave a standing ovation to four Bulgarian songs and “Hubava si, tatkovino”, all broadcast on colour television. In Padua more than a thousand listeners in the congress hall heard Cherubini’s Requiem and Bulgarian songs, demanded encores of everything and would not let the singers go. And in Rome, in the crypt before the sarcophagus of St Cyril, the choir quietly sang Panayot Pipkov’s “Varvi, narode vazrodeni”.

The letter ends by asking whether the reason for the silence was that the choir came from Varna and not from Sofia, reminding the editors that their paper served the whole country – Zhivkov’s telegram, too, had not appeared in a single Sofia newspaper. It is signed by “the singers of the Morski Zvutsi choir, Varna”, winners of “2 first prizes” in Gorizia.