A new season with 56 singers and the concert in the Bulgaria Hall (1985–1986)

While the singers rested, the board had to decide whether the choir should take part in the Panorama of Bulgarian Choral Art in Sofia in October 1985. Chonev was inclined to accept at first but finally declined – not for fear of failure but because of the difficulty of finding money for the trip: the memory of raising funds for Spain was still painful, and the money budgeted for new costumes for the children never came. He then talked one by one with the singers he had decided to release for various reasons – among them, regrettably, good voices whose jobs did not allow them to attend rehearsals regularly. The first meeting of the season, on 1 October, turned into a general meeting: a report on the money spent on the trip and an analysis of the competition and of some singers’ behaviour. The choir began the season with 56 members.

Chonev set out the plans: a concert in Varna on 5 December during the Days of Bulgarian Music, an anniversary concert “30 years of the Morski Zvutsi choir” in April or May 1986, Dvořák’s Stabat Mater at the Sofia Music Weeks festival with the Bulgarian Radio and Television Orchestra under People’s Artist Vasil Stefanov and at Varna Summer with the Varna Philharmonic, and a concert in the district. The pianist Petar Vitanov was obliged by circumstances to leave the choir – the loss of an excellent musician. Power rationing forced the choir to juggle its schedule but did not stop the work. Five sopranos, several tenors and three basses were admitted; not all the newcomers could sing on 5 December, but by the concert of 15 February 1986 they were full members, and the programme included the four ensembles that had won first places at international competitions in 1985.

The concert in the Bulgaria Hall in Sofia was a great success. In Narodno Delo of 15 March 1986, under the headline “High performing mastery”, Bozhidar Gatev wrote that with two first prizes and a second at Cantonigròs the choir had achieved the greatest success of Bulgarian choral performance in 1985. He praised the softness and evenness of the ensemble sound, the sense of style in Bruckner and Janequin, the songs by Reger and Purcell sung by the women’s choir, S. Brotons’s “Nocturne”, the song by St. Mutafchiev and above all A. Tanev’s “Theme and Variations”, as well as Marin Chonev’s artistic presence. Credit was also due to the pianist Teodora Sotirova, accompanist of Zahari Mednikarov’s choir, who at her colleague’s request accompanied the concert.

After a week’s rest the choir began preparing the anniversary concert and finishing the Stabat Mater – with only a week between the two events. The 1986 budget of Morski Zvutsi and of the Varna Boys’ and Youth Choir was presented to the Municipal People’s Council on the basis of an annual grant of 28,300 leva. On 28 February 1986, after months of delay, an exhibition of Zdravko Petkov’s photographs from the trip to Spain opened; it drew many visitors, and the photographs later went into the choir’s archive. Morski Zvutsi did not sing at the concert for Amateur Artists’ Day, but its name was there: among those honoured on stage were Marin Chonev, representing the Varna Boys’ and Youth Choir, and Stoyan Boychev as a decorated chorister; Yanko Korenchev presented him with the badge of “Distinguished Worker of the Committee for Culture”.