The last day in Cantonigròs and the press response (1985)

The last day of the Cantonigròs competition (21 July 1985) brought the choir an unexpected offer: the owner of a recording studio housed in a charming summer villa offered to record a few songs free of charge. The recording went easily – four or five songs, most of them at the first or second take – and the owner was so pleased with the recording of the competition anthem that he told the competition’s president, who asked to hear it at the closing concert.

In the afternoon the singers rested in their meadow, and in the evening they waited a long time for their turn in the winners’ closing concert. Meanwhile the board met the president of the competition, who expressed his satisfaction with the choir’s performance, and Marin Chonev presented him with souvenirs. The choir did not go on stage until 9 p.m. and sang last; after a massed choir of the prize-winning ensembles had sung the competition anthem, members of the jury shared their impressions with the board. The author sums up: a large competition, with choirs from twenty-nine countries (several from Spain) and a high overall artistic standard.

At 7.30 a.m. on 22 July the coaches set off; the hosts saw them off at the car park and sent a car to lead them onto the road to France. The journey home was packed: Girona – the last Spanish town – then Monaco, Nice, Cannes, Saint-Tropez and Grenoble, then Geneva, Bern and Zurich, through Liechtenstein to Salzburg, Vienna and Budapest. In Varna, on Varnenska Komuna Square, the singers were welcomed by their families and by Anna Hristova, chair of the District Council for Culture, and after their “superhuman efforts” they were given a long rest. So ended “another glorious page” in the choir’s history.

On 1 September 1985 the newspaper Narodna Mladezh published an article by Kunka Nedyalkova headed “Bravo, Bulgarians!”. She reported that at the Third International Choral Competition in Cantonigròs, Morski Zvutsi under People’s Artist Marin Chonev had competed against ensembles from more than 20 countries (Czechoslovakia, Soviet Armenia, Brazil, Colombia, Italy and others) and had won first place in the mixed choirs (polyphony) category, first prize for the women’s choir and second place in the folklore category – just one point behind the popular ensemble “Are Nova”. The chairman of the international jury, Àngel Colomer, credited the success to “exceptionally conscientious and responsible work”, and the president of the organising committee remarked that the timbre of the Bulgarian voices, so different from that of the Latin peoples, had made a strong impression on the audience.