Cork 1976: final preparations and the competition days

After Beethoven’s Ninth in Ruse – about which Aleksandar Raychev said in an interview that Morski Zvutsi could rival professional ensembles and that Chonev was one of the country’s best choral conductors – the choir went back to preparing for Cork. Only a month remained, and nothing had been done for the competition in the month before. New dresses and suits also had to be made in that short time: the cloth had been bought, but the Obleklo clothing cooperative had to be persuaded to meet the deadline. About ten days before departure a commission – Donka Bozadzhieva, Mihail Milkov, Veneta Vicheva and Varban Rangelov – auditioned the choir; the composer Paul Arma, author of the first song about Georgi Dimitrov, also attended the rehearsal with his wife. The commission was not particularly pleased, but there was no turning back. On 25 April Nino Ninov gave last instructions on conduct abroad, the singers received their new outfits, and Chonev was presented with flowers for the 20th anniversary of the choir and of his leadership.

A chartered Il-18 flew the choir to Cork. The singers were lodged in different parts of the city, which made getting to the City Hall, where the competition was held, difficult. The mayor welcomed the guests, and Ninov invited him to the May Choral Competition in Varna. The competition opened with a concert of the participants, in which Morski Zvutsi also sang, and its very first pieces drew spontaneous applause.

The real battle began on 29 April. The mixed choir was due on stage only at around 10 p.m., and between dinner at 6 p.m. and the performance there was nowhere to rest. So the singers lodged furthest away decided on their own not to go down to dinner and to make do with their own provisions – a decision taken not by the conductor or the board but by the singers themselves. That evening they went on stage fresh and confident and sang superbly; the jury’s opinion, however, was kept secret until the end of the competition.

On 1 May the men’s choir sang in the morning and the women’s in the afternoon. The men, not used to singing on their own, listened before their turn to the hesitant small men’s choirs in the empty hall and lost confidence – exactly what Chonev had always tried to avoid. Tense as strings, they went sharp in the third, Bulgarian song and left the stage unhappy. The women were called earlier than planned, at 5.20 p.m., and many of the men missed them. Beaming, they reported that they had won over both the audience and their conductor: “We sang like goddesses!” the normally reserved Chonev told them.

The rules also required an extra repertoire for separate concerts. On 2 May at 11 a.m. the choir sang during mass at St Augustine’s church – parts of Cherubini’s Requiem, Tchaikovsky’s “Blessed is he whom Thou hast chosen” and Viadana’s “Exultate justi”, with Petar Vitanov accompanying on the organ; the packed church applauded warmly. In the afternoon came a concert at a castle hotel in Kinsale – a traditional stop for Bulgarian choirs at this competition – where the hosts asked to hear “Rodino mila” and their own chamber choir replied with several songs. In the evening, at the closing concert in the City Hall, the choir sang last, and the audience would not let it leave the stage, even before the results were announced. “Chonev is a hero,” some officials remarked.