Varna Summer ’80 and the obstacles to the West German invitation (1980)

The 1980 May Choral Festival had barely ended when the board learned that Prof. R. Post of the Federal Republic of Germany had agreed to host the choir. Meanwhile duties at home went on: because Marin Chonev had been urgently called to Sofia, the chamber choir sang at the anniversary celebration of the First High School (23 May, Palace of Culture and Sports) under Rositsa Shtereva. Chonev received a commemorative medal as a former pupil of the school and, in Sofia, the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.

On 29 May the choir’s administrator Bogomil Korbakov reported on his phone call with Prof. Post: the German side was waiting for an official invitation addressed to the mayor, would accept 100 singers, wanted old and new German music in the programme, and the concerts would be in Mainhausen and Idar-Oberstein. The board once again faced the painful question of which 10–12 singers would stay at home – probably the irregular attenders and those who did not know the repertoire well. On top of that, the permit to travel to the West had to be switched from Finland to West Germany through D. Ruschev in Sofia, and the answer came only at the end of June. On 12 June the Germans said they accepted the choir’s terms and would send an invitation within eight days – just as Chonev and Korbakov left on a tour of Rostock with the Varna Boys’ Choir and the singers went on holiday from 23 June to 1 August.

Before the break, on 22 June 1980, the full and chamber choirs gave their own concert at the Varna Summer ’80 International Music Festival. In a review headed “The applause was deserved” (Narodno Delo, 26 June), Konstantin Kukushev called Chonev one of the leading figures of contemporary Bulgarian choral art and singled out the clean intonation, clear diction, fine vocal culture and splendid dynamic shading. The programme ranged over Tchaikovsky, Taneyev, Tulikov, Cherubini, Hindemith, Prosnak and Deák-Bárdos as well as D. Hristov, Al. Raychev, Al. Tanev and St. Mutafchiev; the climax was the “Dies irae” from Cherubini’s Requiem, though the critic did not let the weak piano accompaniment pass unremarked.

The chamber choir worked one more week on Mozart’s Mass in C major, planned for the autumn with the Gabrovo Chamber Orchestra, and sight-read it within two weeks. While Chonev, Iliya Torbarov and Korbakov were in Rostock, the rest of the board bought the application forms and kept the hall open so the singers could fill them in; by 10 July nearly 95% had handed in their papers. Only then did it emerge that the invitation had reached the municipality on 2 July but had been sent away for translation and reached the choir only on the 15th. The reply, which Dora Yaneva had to agree with Ivanka Hristova, came too late, and the Germans answered that they could no longer receive the choir. The board phoned Idar-Oberstein, where Mr Weber, chairman of the local choir, confirmed the next day that the guests were welcome. But the new invitation had still not arrived, and the money was only promised.