Guests from Idar-Oberstein and the big audition (April–June 1981)

The chamber choir began learning Mozart’s Mass in C major, but on 2 April 1981 Chonev announced that the planned joint tour with the Symphony Orchestra to Scandinavia and Denmark would not take place, because the money could not be found; by the end of the month the chance of the choir going to Denmark on its own had also vanished. The board decided to collect photographs of the founding members who had left the choir, to honour those whose work and persistence had laid its foundations – but even those who were contacted did not respond, and whether out of indifference or hurt remains a mystery.

On 12 May the children’s choir of the Grub’sche choir from Idar-Oberstein arrived with parents – a hundred people in all, as many as the Varna singers had been on their visit. The guests stayed at the Druzhba resort (today Sv. Konstantin), and in the Morski Zvutsi hall there was a meeting concert with the Varna Boys’ and Youth Choir, followed by a reception at which the young people of the two choirs quickly made friends. The German children were taking part in the May Choral Competition, and on 13 May Morski Zvutsi sang at the opening of the 14th International May Choral Competition in the Palace of Culture and Sports – Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Varna Symphony Orchestra under Ivan Marinov.

On 14 May the Grub’sche choir’s men’s section arrived and was put up at Golden Sands. On 15 May the guests were received by the mayor of Varna, Hristo Toshkov, visited the Ethnographic Museum and had lunch with the Morski Zvutsi board at the Dzhanavara restaurant. Just then the competition organisers moved the choir’s slot in the “Slavic Music” programme from 16 to 15 May because a choir from Japan was delayed. Singers were tracked down by phone and by car, some pulled straight from the table where they were entertaining their German friends, yet at the appointed hour almost all of them were on the stage of the House of Amateur Arts, and they upheld their standard before the competing choirs. The children left on 17 May, the two choirs met on 20 May in the canteen of the Teachers’ Training Institute, and on 21 May the guests were seen off at the airport.

Straight afterwards Chonev announced a full audition of the whole choir, from 3 to 20 June. On 16 June he reported the results: of the 109 regular members, 24 had not come and 85 had been heard; the board released 56 singers and kept 53. The vocal studio was also reshaped: the pianist Nedyalka Stradalska was released from 1 July 1981, the voice teacher Mimi Dimova would work twice a week with singers chosen by the conductor, and a new artistic assistant was planned to work with the sections and the full choir. Rehearsals of the slimmed-down choir began on 18 June, and on 25 June the chamber choir was selected as well.