Greece and the 25th anniversary (1982)

The jubilee year 1982 began with the long-postponed visit to Greece. The board also secured foreign currency for hotel nights, so that the singers would not have to spend two nights in the coaches. Shortly before leaving, on 29 January, the choir sang under Rositsa Shchereva at the Palace of Culture and Sports for the 25th anniversary of the Druzhba factory, and Narodno Delo reported that in Athens and Piraeus the choir would sing mainly works by Bulgarian composers.

Early on 9 February the coaches set off and, after overnight stops in Petrich and Thessaloniki, arrived in front of Piraeus town hall. The programme included a meeting with the mayor and a tour of the city’s sights. The first concert was on 12 February 1982 at the Roakia theatre: the audience “forced” the choir to sing beyond the printed programme, and afterwards the hosts gave a lavish reception. The second concert, on 14 February at the municipal House of Culture, was also extended at the listeners’ request, even though the stage did not allow the singers to stand properly. On 15 February the mayor presented gifts and the choir headed home to Varna.

Straight afterwards the choir travelled to Sofia to take part in the “Panorama of Bulgarian Choral Performance ’82” – on condition that it covered all the costs itself. On 20 February, in the Bulgaria Hall, it gave a concert marking its 25th anniversary, which was an outstanding success; Chonev’s colleagues were generous with their praise. On 25 February the Druzhba factory’s radio broadcast a programme about the jubilee with interviews with the singers Tsvetanka Pandinova and Yanko Uzunov, and the Hristo Botev national radio programme aired part of the Sofia concert.

The jubilee concert itself, “25 years of the Morski Zvutsi Representative Choir – Varna”, took place on 27 February 1982 in the packed House of Amateur Arts. In her review in Narodno Delo on 3 March, Olga Boeva noted the presence of the regional party secretary Genoveva Mihova, cultural figures from all over the country and veteran singers. The address was given by Ivanka Hristova, deputy chair of the executive committee of the Municipal People’s Council, who called the choir a worthy heir to the song heritage of Dobri Hristov, Aleksandar Krastev, Hristo Manolov and Svetoslav Obretenov. The programme combined the “Gloria” from Mozart’s Mass in C major, works by Shebalin, Diakbardos and Prosnak, Milko Kolarov’s “Bright Rain” and Todor Popov’s cycle “Autumn Motifs” to poems by Yavorov with Bulgarian songs – from Aleksandar Raychev’s “Morning by the Sea” and arrangements by Asen Diamandiev to Dobri Hristov’s “Slana padna, Gane” and Georgi Dimitrov’s “Our Song”. The author notes with some bitterness that nothing was done in time about honours for the choir and for some of its leaders and singers on the occasion of the jubilee.

After only ten days’ rest, on 14 March, the choir sang for sailors in the renovated Sailors’ Garrison Club – with all three formations of the choral society: the children’s and youth choir, the young people’s choir (conducted by Darina Tusheva) and the mixed choir (conducted by Rositsa Shchereva), while Marin Chonev led the joint numbers. Immediately afterwards a Bulgarian National Radio crew made stereo recordings of the jubilee programme in the rehearsal hall, also intended for a Balkanton LP. The work was hard and took three evenings, but with it the “maximum programme” for the jubilee year was fulfilled.