Morski Zvutsi in Idar-Oberstein (October 1980)

At 7 a.m. on 12 October 1980, seen off by their families, the singers set out from the Centre for Amateur Arts. They reached Idar-Oberstein very late, after midnight, but to everyone’s surprise the whole host choir – the Grub’sche Männergesangverein, together with the girls and boys who sang with it – was waiting for them in the Festhalle. After a light supper the guests were housed with the host singers and their relatives.

On 17 October, after the usual two-hour rehearsal, which struck the hosts as far too long, the choir had lunch at an old people’s home and sang for its residents. In the evening came the first official concert: in the first half the Grub’sche choir’s mixed and men’s choirs sang, in the second the chamber and full choirs of Morski Zvutsi. The hall was so packed that the movable wall to the buffet had to be raised. The next day the mayor received the singers with wine and snacks and, instead of a formal speech, shook hands with each of them; gifts and songs were exchanged. Then came a concert at the House of Culture in Bad Kreuznach, whose stage could barely hold 96 people and where the audience was smaller than the choir. The hosts often changed times and even events, but always told the group leaders what was coming next.

On 19 October the guests were taken to the hosts’ Singers’ House on a hill outside town – no speeches, just greetings, songs, toasts and a Bulgarian horo dance on the meadow. In the evening the two choirs met for a picnic with whole families; the Grub’sche choir’s board gave gold badges to Ivanka Hristova, Marin Chonev and Bogomil Korbakov. Before that the chamber choir sang pieces by Cherubini, Tchaikovsky, Bortniansky and others in the cathedral, despite the cramped stage and a piano set far from the singers. The only free time was the morning of 20 October.

The Nahe-Zeitung wrote that it was a rare thing for West Germany to welcome a choir of such quality: with its splendid intonation and precise articulation it was like “a choir made up of soloists”, and in the cathedral the “Dies irae” from Cherubini’s Requiem was built up to brilliant climaxes without losing its flow. On 21 October the group visited Frankfurt am Main – the airport, Goethe’s house and the cathedral, where it sang a few songs; because some singers were late, the trip to Mainz was dropped. At 7.15 a.m. on 22 October, after a moving farewell, the coaches set off home, and after many mishaps reached Varna at 5 a.m. on 26 October – the welcoming party, which had waited late into the night, had long gone home, and the travellers arrived to silent streets.

Later Anna Varbanova summarised the German reviews in Varna’s Narodno Delo under the headline “A display of superb voices”: with three full concerts and two shorter programmes at Idar-Oberstein’s cultural festival, Marin Chonev’s singers had upheld the country’s name as a leader in choral art. The programme included Cherubini, Tchaikovsky, Bortniansky, Prosnak, D. Bárdos, D. Hristov, Al. Tanev, St. Mutafchiev and N. Stoykov. Particular interest was aroused by N. Stoykov’s poem for mixed choir and piano “Yovo, le”, in which the critics found nearly all the expressive devices of contemporary choral music familiar from Penderecki, while in Tchaikovsky and Bortniansky they admired the wonderful effects and a pianissimo both tender and full.