Works with orchestra: from “Manfred” to “Zorba”

The longest list in the appendix records 38 works for choir and orchestra performed by the choir, with dates, halls, orchestras, soloists and conductors. Many of them the choir first sang repeatedly with piano – with the accompanist Petar Vitanov, under Marin Chonev – and only later with orchestra. This was the case with Schumann’s “Manfred”, Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, Handel’s “Hallelujah”, T. Popov’s “Invasion” and Cherubini’s Requiem.

The first performances with orchestra were with the Varna Symphony Orchestra: Aram Berberyan’s cantata “Song of Freedom” (1959, conductor Vladi Anastasov), Al. Yosifov’s “Sing, Balkan” at the Summer Theatre (1964) and a series of concerts in 1965 in Varna, Tolbukhin and Shumen under Emil Glavanakov and Nedyalko Nedyalkov. Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy was also conducted by foreign guests – Ferid Alnar of Turkey (1966) and Conrad van Alphen of the Netherlands (1999). In December 1969, in the Universiada Hall in Sofia, the choir sang Al. Raychev’s suite of revolutionary songs and D. Petkov’s “Ballad of Lenin and Dimitrov”.

Cherubini’s Requiem was first performed with orchestra on 15 July 1971 in Varna under the Italian conductor Piero Adorn, then with Yordan Dafov and with the Bulgarian Radio and Television orchestra under Vasil Stefanov. In November 1973 the choir toured Italy with the Plovdiv Symphony Orchestra and the conductor Ruslan Raychev: the Requiem, Rachmaninov’s “The Bells” and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony were heard in Naples (Teatro San Carlo), Benevento, Messina, Palermo, Terni, Bergamo, Vercelli and Ravenna, and in St. Moritz, Switzerland. The Ninth stayed in the repertoire for nearly three decades – in Ruse, Pleven, Sofia and Plovdiv (1976, with soloists from Romania), in an ancient theatre in Athens (1989, conductor Viron Fidzetis) and many times in Varna up to 1999.

In the 1970s and 1980s the choir took part in the premieres of Milko Kolarov’s oratorio “April 1876” (conductor Vasil Kazandzhiev, 1978–1981, and again in 2000), St. Dragostinov’s Symphony-Requiem No. 2, Lyuben Todorov’s Symphony No. 1, Al. Raychev’s oratorio “Friendship” and cantata “Varna”, D. Hinkov’s cantata “Black Sea” and Konstantin Iliev’s “September 23”. Then came Dvořák’s “Stabat Mater” at the Sofia Music Weeks (1986, Vasil Stefanov), Shostakovich’s “Song of the Forests” (conductor Georgi Notev) and Beethoven’s Mass in C, as well as Mozart’s Mass in C with the Varna Boys’ and Youth Choir and organ (1989–1991).

From the 1990s the orchestral repertoire grew wider still: Brahms’s “German Requiem” with a German student orchestra in Vézelay and Autun, France (1990, conductor Pierre Cao of Luxembourg), Stravinsky’s “Oedipus Rex” (1995), Schubert’s Mass in C (1997), Verdi’s Requiem (1998–2001, conductors Yordan Dafov and Hristo Ignatov), Mozart’s opera “Don Giovanni” (1998), Bach’s Magnificat and Cantata 150, Mozart’s Requiem and Bizet’s “Te Deum” – the last of these with the Sinfonietta orchestra and American choirs and conductors. In the United States the choir sang Poulenc’s “Gloria” with the Columbia (South Carolina) Symphony Orchestra (2000). The list ends with the first performance of Theo Fürst’s Mass in F in the cathedral at Kirn and in Idar-Oberstein, Germany (September 2004), conducted by the composer himself, and with Theodorakis’s “Zorba” in Thessaloniki on 31 October 2004.