Memories and greetings: Nino Ninov and Ivanka Hristova

“Fond memories” – Nino Ninov

Nino Ninov, the choir’s long-serving chairman, succeeded Lyuba Lipova as head of the Culture department of the City People’s Council. It was she who told him that the representative city choir had been created with her help in 1956. So when, at the end of 1962, Marin Chonev asked him to head the choir’s board, he accepted without hesitation and took the task on as a personal mission.

Ninov remembers the board’s monthly meetings and admits that the hardest part was finding money, especially for tours and international competitions. Even so, he never once failed; the mayor of the day, Nikolay Boyadzhiev, was a particular help. Today, almost thirty years after formally parting from the choir, he still lives with it in his thoughts.

His strongest memory is of the Seghizzi International Choral Competition in Gorizia, Italy, in 1972. He travelled with the singers, heard the high standard of the choirs before them and grew nervous. But when Chonev raised his hands, the choir sang with total conviction, and to Ninov it seemed “not the choir singing, but M. Chonev himself”. The hall rose to its feet. Even before the official results, the chairman of the polyphony jury walked past him and silently showed him the number six on his fingers. Ninov also recalls visits by eminent musicians, among them Zahari Mednikarov, and ends with warm words for the choir and for its conductor, whom he sympathises with over the trouble that ill-wishers caused him around every anniversary.

Morski Zvutsi at 50 – Ivanka Hristova

Ivanka Hristova, a former deputy mayor of Varna, calls Varna the most musical city in Bulgaria – home to Marin Chonev, Emil Glavanakov, Emil Trifonov, Vasil Arnaudov, Georgi Robev, Petko Mechkov and Milko Kolarov. She recalls that Lyuba Lipova was sent to Sofia to ask Prof. Georgi Dimitrov to let Chonev return to Varna and lead the new choir; the mayor at the time was Vasil Popov.

In Hristova’s view the municipality built a good base for rehearsals, but the choir owes its international reputation above all to Prof. Chonev. He also created a whole school of choirs – for boys, young men and girls – that trained singers for Morski Zvutsi. She stresses that Chonev was not only an outstanding professional but a good person who motivated singers to stay for years, for as long as their age allowed. She wishes the choir to remain Varna’s emblem and pride, and the people of Varna to stand behind it.